All Silver and Gold
by MG Atwood
Summary: The Master is rescued from the Time War by an unexpected saviour and found by the Doctor. Will he ever fully regain his sanity? And how ever will the Ponds manage to put up with him?
1. Prologue

**A/N: This will be mostly a collection of one-shots and slightly longer story arcs in loosely chronological order. Rated T for mild language and for the Master being his usual charming self; no pairings apart from the Ponds. This is my first DW fanfiction and the first fanfiction I've written in a few years, so reviews and suggestions would be loved. ^_^**

**Edit: ****The capitalization errors on the words Dalek and Time War should be fixed now. ^_^**

**Disclaimer: _Doctor Who _and all related content and characters belong to the BBC; no infringement is intended.**

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Far below the Time Lord Citadel, sheltered from the thundering of missiles and crashing ships that had leveled much of the city above, the Lord President Rassilon strode down a corridor toward the detention cells, his red and gold robes swirling around his feet and his golden staff of office tapping loudly against the stone floor. Guards scurried back and snapped to attention when they saw him, pressing themselves against the walls in desperate efforts to not attract his notice, slumping with relief as the President passed them by. The news had spread throughout the Capitol like fire: the President's plan had failed. Gallifrey would not rise again. The Time Lords would not return. The plan had failed and soon they were all going to burn. It was too late to do anything about the Doctor – he had the Moment and nothing would stop him from using it to destroy them all – but there was still one upon whom the full wrath of Gallifrey could fall before it was obliterated forever. The one upon whom all the hopes of Gallifrey had rested, the Time Lords' only chance for life and escape. The one who had betrayed them all and helped the Doctor destroy those hopes. The one who was now imprisoned under maximum security in the cell that Rassilon was approaching, held fast with energy bonds and force fields to ensure he would never escape justice again. The Master.

Resting his staff against the wall outside the cell, Rassilon nodded dismissively to the two guards there, both of them saluting him sharply before hastily making their retreat and leaving the President alone with the Master. The force fields surrounding the captive hummed and shimmered briefly as they switched off to allow the President to pass through, snapping back into place immediately behind him, and the chained man raised his head at the sound, blinking at the light. Even now, utterly helpless and condemned to death, he still managed a weak contemptuous smirk at Rassilon as the Time Lord stood before him. "W's wondering when you'd show up," the Master said, his words slurring with exhaustion. "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist a bit of a gloat before the big show. 's gotta be soon now – Gallifrey must not have a lot of time left before it all goes up in flames."

"You will be silent," Rassilon growled slowly at the renegade, curling his lip in disgust at the Master. He had stabilized the traitor's form, a necessity given the dangerous energy blasts he had been capable of generating before, but it was only the need for a proper execution that had stayed him from destroying the creature outright. The disruption of the Master's body from the botched resurrection had left its mark, his formerly dark hair bleached to pale ash blond by the uncontrolled discharge of artron energy, and he still had that gleam of madness in his eyes, but apart from that and the dirt he looked almost normal. The outward normality served only to underscore how much a perversion of his noble species the Master was in his diseased insanity and, regardless of his own role in causing that insanity, Rassilon could barely bring himself to accept that such a madman existed among their number. "You are unfit to speak our planet's name or bear the title of Time Lord."

The blond man rasped out a humourless laugh. "Yes, how ever did our proud old race produce a monster like me, eh? Oh, yeah, that's right! _You_. Good work, Frankenstein," he said mockingly. "Some all-mighty creator you turned out to be." The President snarled and raised his gloved left hand, letting a blue glow build up on its polished metal surface, and stepped forward, looming over the Master and glaring unblinkingly into his dark eyes. The prisoner returned a defiant stare, but even he couldn't quite overcome the awe of Rassilon that was bred into the bone of all Time Lords, not now when there was nothing left to fight for, and after a few seconds he broke his gaze and turned his head away with a scoff as if bored with the brief contest.

Angered by the dismissive response, Rassilon seized the Master roughly by the throat and shook him hard, throwing the smaller man off his feet. "You insolent wretch," he spat, his grip forcing the blond Time Lord to face him. "Why should I bother with a grand execution for a piece of filth like you, a repulsive animal deserving naught but a dog's death? I should dispatch you where you stand and leave your corpse to rot in the wastelands like a soulless dalek."

The Master grinned sharply, meeting Rassilon's eyes without flinching this time. "But that would deny you the chance to make a big speech, wouldn't it? Killing me here with no one around to see, no one to applaud you and cheer, no big spectacle to show everyone what true Gallifreyan justice is?" He chuckled with a sly smirk at the furious President. "No, that would never do. This is your last great act before Gallifrey burns – you'll want to make it count."

Rassilon's mouth tightened into a grim line, and he released his grip on the prisoner. "If only to give the Time Lords peace, to let them see that justice has been served and their approaching deaths due to your actions properly avenged, I shall keep you alive until the appointed time. They deserve the right to witness your destruction." His ice blue eyes narrowed slightly and he lowered his head with a hint of a vindictive smile. "It is unfortunate that none of your family is left to observe the execution – were you aware that your father is dead?" Caught off-guard, the Master stared wide-eyed at Rassilon, his expression a mix of shocked disbelief and regret, and a muscle in his jaw twitched with anger as he saw the President's smile grow at his reaction. "Yes, you had fled by that time. Abandoned your post and left the task of battling the dalek emperor to braver men, men like your father. He fell before the Cruciform, time wrapping around him in a never-ending cycle such that he has been killed and revived only to die again a million times over, each death worse than the last, dying in torment for all eternity. It is perhaps just as well that he did not live to learn of his child's cowardice, that he died proud, unaware that his line had become so debased and perverted as to have produced such a corruption as you."

The Master tried to give an indifferent grin, but it came out more as a grimace. While he didn't doubt that Rassilon would say anything at this point to hurt him, somehow he felt down in his hearts that the President was telling the truth and that his father was dead. Worse than dead, if the Cruciform had got to him. _Not for much longer though_, he thought, a slightly manic smile spreading across his face as the realization came to him. _The Doctor ended it. Will end it. Tomorrow it all ends forever._ He chuckled and glanced up at Rassilon, eyebrow raised sardonically. "Lucky for him that eternity will only last one more day, then, isn't it?" The President looked taken aback at that, and the Master grinned widely. "You're filth, too, y'know," he said conversationally. "We all are. Tomorrow we all burn and turn to dust and ash, nothing left but dead dirt, and your ashes will mix together with mine and no one would be able to tell which dust was you and which was me."

The President swelled angrily at his insolence. "I am nothing like you!" he spat, his eyes blazing with fury. "I am the Creator, the first and the last, the true conqueror of Time itself! Our very race exists because I chose to create it, to raise it out of the wretched subsistence that preceded it. We may all meet our annihilation tomorrow, but by Gallifrey I will see to it that you show me proper respect before you die." Rassilon raised his right hand to the Master's temple, and the Master shrank back from the touch with genuine fear suddenly sparking in his eyes. The bonds held him tightly in place, unable to evade contact, and he clenched his eyes shut as he frantically built up every mental barricade he could manage. _Ironic, isn't it?_ said a little voice at the back of his mind, that strange mad little voice that always spoke up at the most inappropriate of times. _You used to dream that Rassilon would magically reappear and go into your mind to fix everything, make it all better, and here you are doing all you can to keep him out._

His attempts were useless; the President's mind hurtled through his defenses as if they were nothing, searing into the Master's mind and turning through it in an offhandedly destructive way, tossing memories and thoughts to the side without concern. The Master desperately closed doors in his mind in the feeble hope that Rassilon would at least respect the most basic tenet of entering another's mind, that you _did not ever_ force open a door, but that wish quickly proved to be in vain. Distantly he noticed that he was screaming, not in pain but in terror as Rassilon picked out choice memories of the Time War, of the Cruciform under the emperor's control, the horrific things he had seen it do, and brought it all to the front of his mind again. _Please don't, please, please, please don't, stop it, please, just stop, I order you to stop, please, stop!_ he thought, screaming the words into his own mind where Rassilon would hear them.

The President responded with a mental slap that sent the Master physically reeling, only the bonds on his arms holding him upright, and he heard Rassilon snarl back _Do you think you have any power here; that you can stop me or hinder me in any way? I will do as I wish. Everything you are, those very walls you put up to guard yourself from me, I gave to you and can take back just as easily. You are nothing if I will it to be so. I see everything that you are and everything in your mind, and there is nothing you can hide from me. I am Rassilon, creator of the Time Lords, and you will respect me!_

Something black and twisted rose up in the Master's hearts at the words, and he found himself searching for memories himself, somehow ignoring the images of atrocities and carnage that Rassilon was dredging up from the depths of his mind where he had sunken them so firmly. The memory he wanted came to him, faster than he'd expected, and he clung to it like a life raft. _You see everything, do you?_ he asked bitterly. _Do you see this?_ He let the memory flow into his thoughts, sending it at Rassilon and forcing the President to look at it, a memory of two children playing in fields of red grass. A young black-haired boy running, chasing after his friend and dancing around him to duck thrown handfuls of silver leaves, both of them laughing and yelling with pure happiness. Another memory; the same black-haired boy in his novice's robes walking toward the Untempered Schism, looking back uncertainly at the aged proctor behind him, being given a reassuring nod in return. Turning trustingly back to the Schism.

_Do you see this? _The sound of drums. The boy hiding in the darkness, arms wrapped over his head, trying to block out the sound that would never stop, battering against the inside of his skull, _one two three four, one two three four_, never stopping, not for one heartbeat. Years of the drums, decades, centuries. Driving him mad. Killing made it better – no, made it tolerable, let him ride with the drums instead of being crushed under their constant beat. Madness to the drumbeat, _one two three four_. More death, more bodies, bringing war, he could rise above it, even if for just a little while before the drums overpowered him again, crushing him, killing him.

_How about this, do you see this?_ Learn to love the noise, learn to welcome it – it's the only thing that's stayed true to him; he must love it in return. The drums love him. He loves them. This must be true, or else they'd drive him mad, _one two three four, one two three four_. Kill more for them, make them so happy, his pretty drums. They'll love him so much and never ever leave him.

_Did you see this one yet?_ Waking after silence, somehow all has been silence, but the drums are there to greet him, _one two three four_. He's a soldier now, he's told to fight, to kill. Slaughter, murder, butcher, kill. The drums approve. They carry him through it, _one two three four_, he's terrified, screaming inside, but they won't let him stop, none of them will. Then the Cruciform, oh, the Cruciform, and even the drums can't stop him now, he's running, stealing his ship, running so far. The drums try to punish him, beat louder than ever before, thundering, such pain behind his eyes, splitting his skull, but they can't stop him. He becomes a human and hides at the end of all things. He wants to die. Let the universe die and take him with it, him and those accursed drums.

_Now I know you've seen this bit_. The Doctor. Back again, always back again, young this time, so full of life and love. He hates the Doctor. The drums hate him, too. Rising again, thundering, riding on the hate, what better than to take his precious Earth? The drums love it, _one two three four, one two three four_. They promise they'll stop hurting soon, so soon, if he's good. He takes a wife, his little Lucy, and makes her his, body and soul. She doesn't like the drumming, but he doesn't care. Then the Toclafane, his darling children, his precious loves – he wants them to be happy, and they do so love killing, just like their loving Father in the heavens. They fly to the sound of drumbeats. The drums keep promising they'll stop soon, so very soon, not much longer now, just a little bit longer. He's been good, why haven't they stopped? Bang. So cold, pain, the Doctor crying over him, cold victory, so very cold, hurts so much, won't it ever stop?

_Do you remember how this ends? _Waking again. The drums are stronger, tearing him apart. Pounding, pounding, pounding, pounding, _one two three four, one two three four_, he can't think, can't think, how can he think, such noise, on and on and on and on, so much pain, why won't they stop? Hungry, so hungry, hurt, eat, drums, make them stop, Doctor, please, listen, listen, listen, _listen_. The Doctor hears them. Validation, he isn't mad, never was mad, so hungry, hungry, but what are they, Doctor, _what what what what?_ Salvation like a miracle from above, that glorious Gate, fix it, fix it, fix it, must fix it, hungry, something just make it stop, Doctor, anything, it's tearing him apart. All the world hears the drumming now, _one two three four_, and he knows it now, knows its purpose, knows what to do. For the first time in his life, he knows what to do. Gallifrey returning, his home, his everything, all his now – he'll own it all. It was worth it, worth the drums, why is the Doctor trying to stop him? Then the truth. He was a tool, broken, bent, damaged but serving its purpose. Purpose now done, no reward but death for the little diseased tool. The Doctor blocking the way. Standing before him, saving him; could Gallifrey be theirs, both ruling together? The Doctor wouldn't kill him, would never kill him, would he? Would he? "Get out of the way." Bang. Gallifrey falls, and the drums fall with it, head clearing, so clear, so empty and silent. Clarity. The Doctor standing, waiting to die, can't let him die, not him, not now. His friend, all this time his friend, why couldn't he see it? The only thing that's stayed true to him. He loves him. Get out of the way. _One. Two. Three. Four!_

The Master opened his eyes as if waking from a dream and fixed his glare on Rassilon. _You wanted me to respect you? Well, here's what I feel for you, Creator, every bit of it._ With that, he opened up his mind completely, bringing all the rage and hatred he possessed to bear on the President, blasting into his mind with the full force of a lifetime of hate and suffering, unstoppable and unrelenting. Rassilon cried out and staggered back, throwing his arms up over his face as if to block the mental assault, the contact snapping as he did so. The Master grinned and let himself collapse against the bonds, not caring about how weak he must look, not caring that he couldn't even stand. He'd defeated Rassilon once, the most powerful Time Lord in existence, brought him to his knees, and now he'd done it for a second time. There would be punishment for it, obviously, but he didn't care about that, either. He had won.

Rassilon stumbled, barely catching himself from falling, and slowly straightened up again, his expression murderous. "You…" he snarled, his voice dripping with pure loathing. He raised his gloved left hand, blue light sparking over it in a frenzy, but then he paused and glared at the Master as he remembered the slated execution. The blue light died and Rassilon lashed out, striking the Master across the face with the heavy metal gauntlet. The blond Time Lord slumped, barely conscious but still smirking slightly, and the President grabbed him by the front of his black hoodie and lifted him up again to glare furiously into his dazed eyes. After a few seconds, a slow malicious smile spread over Rassilon's face. "While we are sharing old memories, perhaps you would care to see some of mine. I am sure you will find them entertaining," he said, resting his right hand on the Master's face again and placing his fingertips delicately to avoid the blood welling up from the short gashes left by the metal glove. There was nothing the Master could do to block him, and he didn't even bother to try, knowing it was useless and lacking the energy to make the attempt anyway. Images flooded into his mind, things he only vaguely realized in his stunned state were from the Time War, as bad as and worse than what he had seen for himself during it. He was screaming again, but he didn't much care about that, either. Blackness was creeping over him, merciful blackness and silence, and he saw no reason to try to fight it, instead letting himself slip away into nothingness where even Rassilon couldn't reach him.

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It was a couple of hours later – _one hour and forty-eight minutes, nineteen seconds _, his brain supplied automatically – when the Master slowly opened his eyes and shook his head dizzily, trying to get rid of the visions burned into his mind. It did no good, not that he'd expected it to work, and he raised his head to gaze around the cell. Rassilon was gone and the force fields all up as usual, no guards in sight, and he let his head loll down again.

There was such a bone-aching exhaustion in him, to the point that even breathing seemed like excessive exertion, and he idly wondered if he was dying. This body had never been meant to be permanent, not with the damage done to it by Lucy's anti-resurrection cocktail, and he knew he'd been far too careless in his madness, burning off his own life energy for the most trivial of things, drunk on the incredible power of it and not stopping to think of the long-term consequences. Well, no need to worry about those now anyway. He may have used up most of his remaining lifespan, but even so he almost certainly had more than one day's worth of life left in him and less than one day of time to live in. The Master wasn't entirely certain how he felt about that. Death had always been the enemy, the one thing he fought against the most, and now he had no escape from it, no means to fight it. Nothing to do but accept it. His lip curled in a snarl. Ridiculously cliché though it was, he would accept death over his dead body, and probably not even then. He was the Master, never dying, and he would always find a way.

There was a giggle from behind him, and the Master gave a violent start and tried to whip his head around far enough to see who was there, to no avail. "Yeeesssss," the voice chortled, an oddly mechanical vibration to the sound. "Fighting, fighting. He never gives in, our brave little Master man. So afraid and so strong."

"Who are you? Show yourself!" the Master demanded, twisting around and tugging against the energy bonds. The voice was unfamiliar, but that sound to it… he knew that sound, and it made his hearts batter against his ribs in fear. It couldn't be though, couldn't possibly be, because he was standing there helpless and yet was still alive. It had to be someone using a voice modulator, just a prank to torment him. He was far below the citadel, beneath force fields and temporal walls and miles of solid rock – there was no possible way they could get through all that…

A golden glow shimmered into being in front of him, the voice still giggling madly, and the Master had to close his eyes and turn away from the brightness of it, the light's intensity leaving green flares across his vision. The glow faded and he cracked open one eye to look, squinting into the relative darkness left behind. There was a shape there, short, cylindrical, and right on its crown was a single shining blue light that swung around with a mechanical whir to focus on him.

The Master threw himself back against the bonds, struggling fiercely against them but unable to make them give even an inch. "Let me out!" he screamed desperately, though the guards were gone and no one was there to hear him. "Let me out, let me out; you have to let me out!" The Dalek tittered and rolled forward until its eyestalk was almost touching the Master's face, the blue glow of its eye reflecting off of his as he stared into it with terror. There was something unusual about the Dalek though; its casing was a dark near-black shade of silver with an identification tag set under its eye stalk, and with a sick twist in his stomach the Master realized just what the Dalek had to be. "You're part of the Cult," he breathed, barely able to get the words out. "The Cult of Skaro. It actually exists?"

"Hee!" the Dalek said gleefully. "So clever, like him, so clever. Just like hiiim. Yes, he will see! The saviour and the destroyer of all, he will seeeee! He tries to hide his soul but it will always come out again; no matter how fast he runs, he will still see." A small hatch sprang open on the Dalek's side and a clawed metal arm extended slowly from it, reaching toward the Master. The Time Lord wrenched himself back, trying to avoid its grasp, but the bonds were too tight to allow much movement, and he finally stopped and stood trembling as the claws clamped firmly around his forearm. There was a brilliant flash of gold and blue light, and the empty shackles fell to the floor as both the Master and the Dalek vanished from the cell without a trace.


	2. Discovery  Part 1

**A/N: Thank you so much for the wonderful reviews! That really made my day, seeing those. 3**

**Rhivanna – **Aww, thank you, both for the praise and the welcome – that really means a lot to me. ^^ And yay, first reviewer! :D

**Aietradaea – **Thank you! Yep, it's Dalek Caan popping by after rescuing Davros, killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. Thanks for pointing out the capitalization of Dalek, too – I've fixed that in the newer fics now. ^^

**Renart – **Thanks! There's definitely a dearth of Master-centric fics set in Season 5 or onward, though there are a few excellent ones around. :)

**LeonaWriter – **I'm glad you like it! :3 Also, thank you – your asking about the fanfic my drawing was based on is what finally persuaded me to make an account here and actually start posting some of these. ^^

**This is the first part of one of those slightly longer stories I mentioned - it's set in some unspecified time post-Season 5.**

**Disclaimer: **_**Doctor Who **_**and all related content and characters belong to the BBC; no infringement is intended.**

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The TARDIS barreled through the vortex, bouncing and tumbling in its usual erratic manner like a marble being shaken in a tube. Inside the ship, its two human occupants clung desperately to the guard rails surrounding the console platform to avoid being thrown off of it, occasionally shooting glances at the alien who was piloting the time machine and wishing that River had stuck around a bit longer to give him some flying lessons. "Doctor?" Amy called over to him during one of the brief periods between bone-jarring jolts, and the Time Lord looked up from the console with a broad grin and shining eyes. "Where exactly are we going? You seem in a bit of a rush." There was a crash as something in one of the TARDIS's innumerable rooms fell over, and Amy grit her teeth and held on as a new round of shaking started up.

Once the TARDIS settled out into another calm spell, the Doctor leaned over without taking his hands from the controls and yelled over the thunder of the engines "I picked up a distress signal from Elco Theta Four, a moon on the edge of the Ralicon system. Thing is, the signal was sent on the same communications frequency the TARDIS uses – someone's been trying to call a Time Lord."

"Maybe it's just a coincidence," Rory suggested, clutching one of the chairs as he tried not to fall down the stairs. "I mean, there are only so many frequencies, right?"

The Doctor held up a finger, his eyes already back on the console. "True, but I don't believe in coincidences. Travel around in time and space long enough and just about everything starts to look planned. This is someone who knows about TARDISes and how to contact one, which really narrows down the field."

"So who do you think it is? River again?" Amy asked, her eyebrows raised.

The Doctor grinned at her, his brown hair flopping down over his eyes and making him look even younger than usual. "No idea," he said cheerfully. "But I can't wait to find out." As he spoke, he pulled back on a lever under the console and slammed his open palm down on the return key of the old-fashioned typewriter that was wired into the TARDIS controls. The ship shuddered and filled with the familiar whirring of its engines as they slowed and the TARDIS materialized at its destination. Amy and Rory picked themselves up off the floor, Rory brushing dust off his rumpled jacket, and the Doctor dashed by them on his way to the doors.

"Oi!" Amy said loudly, making the Time Lord stop in his tracks and twist around gracefully at the waist to look back at her. "You're not running off and seeing a new alien world before we do." The Doctor bounced impatiently on the balls of his feet as Rory and Amy caught up with him, and then the three hurried to the TARDIS doors together, the Doctor flinging them open once he reached them. The two humans leaned out to see the surface of the moon they had landed on, and Amy made a small sound of disappointment. "It looks like… a moon," she complained, gesturing at the barren grey landscape before them. "It's a moonscape. What's the point of going to a moon if it's just going to look like any other boring old moon?"

The Doctor sidled around his complaining companion, puffs of dust rising around his shoes and swirling away in the light breeze as he stepped out on to the surface, and peered around curiously. "Hmm, that's rather odd. I'd have thought it was a bit small to have its own atmosphere, but it seems – ah! That would be where our signal was coming from," he said, pointing up at what looked like a decrepit radio tower. The metal on the tower's base was pitted and corroded, a few sheets of its siding peeling off and hanging loosely by a few bolts, but there was still a small flickering green light visible at the top of it. "There must have been a settlement here at some point, probably a terraforming colony." He gazed at the desolate bare rocks surrounding them. "Long gone now, by the looks of it."

"Maybe the people who sent the distress signal have already gone," Amy said, but the Doctor shook his head distractedly, still looking around.

"No, there's something here. The signal is recent, far more so than the tower," he said. The Time Lord waved a hand toward the tower aerial, which had a rough scaffold built around its base supporting it and strips of fabric holding metal splints to the antenna. "Look, you can see where someone's patched it up, trying to repair it. I imagine the antenna must have fallen off at some point and broken. That cloth wouldn't hold up for more than a few years in this environment, so the fix must be fairly new. It's clever work though – they knew what they were doing, even if the materials weren't ideal."

"Uh, Doctor?" Rory said uncertainly. "Are those buildings over there, d'you think?" The other two turned to see where he was pointing, and sure enough there was a group of small rounded domes just visible through the dusty grey haze. Gaping holes were visible in some of the roofs, and there was a fair bit of rubble surrounding the bases where other buildings had collapsed, but a few still looked mostly intact. The Doctor gave each of his companions a significant look, and the three set off briskly for the outpost without another word.

There was no door on the largest of the domes that was still standing, and when Amy and Rory poked their heads in through the empty doorway they saw that the back wall was gone, nothing but twisted metal and chunks of concrete left to show that there had even been a wall there. Through the opening they could see another building, its side torn down by the collapse of the larger dome's wall. While the Doctor carried on to a different dome, the couple picked their way through the mess inside the main one, Rory keeping an anxious eye on the ceiling. It looked like this had once been a gathering area, with a sunken section in the middle holding the broken remnants of chairs in it, their padding long since torn off and scattered over the floor. There was no sign that anything living had been there in a very long time.

The smaller dome beyond the fallen wall was in better repair than the first, having escaped the brunt of the collapsing walls, and the air inside it wasn't nearly as dusty as it had been outside or in the other dome. The couple carefully climbed through the bent pieces of scrap metal from the demolished framework, Rory holding Amy's hand to support her over a precarious bit of concrete, until with a final jump they were both clear of the rubble and able to look around the dome properly. It had a wide counter running along the edge of the room, along with several other freestanding ones arranged in a series of semicircles in the middle, and there were tarnished metal stools bolted to the floor along their lengths. "It's a cafeteria," Rory said after a moment, gazing around with some surprise and flashbacks to university. "Even in the future, they still have cafeterias."

"Wonder if the food will still be rubbish," Amy mused. Her eyes were caught by a brief flash of light to one side of the room, and she nudged Rory with her elbow as she headed toward the source of it: a bank of machines that covered the wall above one counter. Most were missing their front panels, exposing the bare wires and circuitry underneath, and twisted bundles of wires were hanging dejectedly out of a few that looked like they'd been mauled by something, but some were still in one piece. "Lookit these," she said. "It looks like a couple are still working. Well, this one is, anyway." On the front of one intact machine toward the bottom of the group, a single red light was blinking slowly, and Amy moved a finger toward the buttons at its base curiously.

"Don't push anything!" Rory said, grabbing her hand and eying the machine like it might explode. "You don't know what that might do if you push the wrong thing."

"It's a cafeteria, stupid; they probably didn't put the controls to a nuclear bomb or anything in here," she replied, rolling her eyes at him. Nevertheless, she dropped her hand with a huff and turned away from the machine to look around some more. She leant over one of the counters and gave a start, quickly waving over her shoulder and hissing "Psst! Rory! Look at this." Between two of the curved counters there was a tangled mess of torn fabric and stuffing from the chairs in the other dome, all shoved into a rough pile like a rat's nest with a tattered blanket lying crumpled to one side. Next to it was a large assortment of wires, bolts, circuit boards and bits of glass and plastic, a few rocks and pieces of concrete of various sizes and shapes, a pair of computer screens and a collection of makeshift tools fashioned from small metal scraps that had been twisted and hammered into shape.

Rory came alongside her and raised his eyebrows as he followed her gaze. "Looks like someone's been busy," he commented.

"D'you think they fixed that machine to make it work, the same way they did with the tower? They must have," Amy said, not giving him time to answer. "I do wonder where our mystery repairman is hiding though."

"Right here." The unfamiliar rough voice behind them made both Rory and Amy jump and yell with startled surprise, and they spun around to face the newcomer, Rory stumbling over his feet a little and clutching at Amy. The man behind them seemed human enough, though he was painfully thin and covered in grime, a mix of what looked like engine grease and dust. Slightly built and a couple inches shorter than Amy, he didn't make for an imposing figure, though there was something indefinably sinister about him despite his scruffy appearance. His dirty blond hair had been untidily hacked short and was sticking up in all directions, a few grungy black streaks showing where he had run his hands over it at some point in a failed attempt to smooth it, and he clearly hadn't shaved for a while. The remnants of what looked like a black sweatshirt hung in shreds over what was left of his red shirt, and he wore scuffed-up work boots under his torn jeans. Thready bits of cloth were wrapped around his hands as well, and Amy could see several patches where blood had seeped through the grubby makeshift bandages from deep gashes across his fingers and palms. Overall, he looked a mess.

The stranger leant forward abruptly with an intent expression and sniffed the air, and Amy found herself suddenly wishing she didn't have the counter at her back blocking her way. There was something dark and glittering about the man's eyes, like a snake's, and a distinct predatory sharpness to his movement that made her heart pound. "Human, are you?" he asked, tilting his head with a smile. "Good! I like humans. I like them very much."

Somehow Amy got the feeling that he didn't mean 'like' in the sense of enjoying their company. "Ah, yes, we are human," she said uneasily, putting one hand on Rory's shoulder and pushing him slightly toward the end of the counter. "And you would be an alien, yeah?"

The blond man snorted. "You're the aliens. But I'm not _human_, if that's what you mean." He sneered a bit at the word, seeming to find it distasteful using it in any reference to himself, even a negative one. "Are you here alone?"

"Nope!" Amy quickly said. "Not alone, definitely not alone. We have a friend with us, an _alien_ friend. Who is very powerful and fond of us."

The stranger threw his head back and laughed victoriously, clapping his hands in front of himself like an excited child. "Ah, excellent, _excellent_! Let's see, who do I know who's very powerful and fond of humans? Must be him. Unfortunately you're probably correct in saying he likes you, so there goes _that_ idea; last thing I need is another sanctimonious lecture from him. Why does he have to be so damn _annoying_?" His amusement gone as abruptly as it had appeared, he glowered at them for a moment with a hungry gleam in his eyes before huffing peevishly. "All he ever does is criticize, always on my case about every little thing, never a kind word, no matter what I do. Not once. It wouldn't be so hard, would it, just once? I have to have done _something_ good, even just once, right?"

The man was now looking up at Amy with an oddly beseeching expression in his dark hazel eyes, his mood having flipped yet again, and Amy kept edging away, guiding Rory along beside her. "I'm sure you have," she said with a forced smile, feeling behind her with one hand for the corner of the counter and hoping to find something that could function as a weapon if needed. It sounded like this stranger knew the Doctor, but even more it sounded like he was completely unstable and possibly dangerous. A bit of risk was all well and good, but right now all she wanted was for the Doctor to appear and sort things out in that way he always had of turning scary situations into... well, often scarier situations, but when he was there they somehow just seemed like adventures instead.

As if on cue, the Doctor's voice echoed in from the next dome over. "Ponds? Where have they gone off to now – I swear, I leave them alone for one second… Ponds!"

"We're in here!" Amy called over her shoulder, not taking her eyes off of the man, who had tilted his head sharply like a cat at the Doctor's voice and appeared to be listening intently. A scuffling sound and muffled grumbling from the back of the dome let her know that the Doctor was climbing through the pile of rubble between the two buildings. The stranger's focus seemed completely on the approaching Time Lord instead of them now, and Amy took advantage of his distraction to grab Rory's hand and slip around the edge of the counter, pulling her husband after her. Feeling somewhat safer with the bulk of the counter between her and the creepy alien, she turned her head slightly to see the Doctor saunter into the dome.

"Ah, there you both are!" he said happily as he spotted the couple. "Any luck yet with th- uh. Oh." The Doctor's voice trailed off, and he stood silently with the most dumbfounded expression Amy had ever seen on the usually self-possessed Time Lord's face, gaping past them at the blond man.

The stranger was staring back in return, though he didn't look quite as astonished, more surprised and uncertain. He blinked and swallowed slowly before drawing in a deep breath. "Doctor," he said, his voice shaking.

The Doctor very slowly dipped his head in response. "Master," he said quietly. The blond man stepped around the edge of the counter, ignoring Amy and Rory as they shuffled warily away from him, and walked hesitantly toward the Doctor, his eyes fixed on the Time Lord. Amy noted his unsteady gait – the alien kept one hand lightly against the countertops as he moved, sometimes staggering weakly and barely catching himself from falling, and she recalled how very thin he was. Maybe there hadn't been much need to be afraid of him after all, considering he seemed hardly able to walk, but then she remembered his eyes and decided that in this case she would much rather be safe than sorry.

A few feet from the Doctor, the alien addressed as 'Master' stopped, leaning heavily against a nearby counter in an almost predatory hunch as he looked at the Doctor. After a moment of silence, he straightened slightly and growled "You abandoned me. You could have helped me but you let them take me."

The Doctor flinched and grimaced, dropping his gaze briefly to the dusty floor before dragging it back up to meet the other alien's again. "I couldn't stop it," he said, his voice low and pained. "Everything happened too fast, Gallifrey was shaking the place to pieces and I couldn't... I didn't even realize you were caught in the Gate until it had closed and it was too late. If I could have reached you…" He sighed, dropping his head again before shaking it slightly, as if giving up on explanations. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

The Master tilted his head and eyed the Doctor cagily, a slight grin playing over his face, and slowly he started to chuckle, though it didn't sound like he was amused, more like he was forcing something else away with laughter. He twisted his head around sharply, cracking his neck, and jerked his head back up to focus a sharp intense glare on the Doctor. "How ironic, you wishing you could have saved me," he said.

"I always wish I could have saved you," the Doctor replied with a slight rueful smile. "It does make it rather difficult when a person refuses to let you help them though."

The Master raised his eyebrows and blinked at him. "So… you're saying it's my fault?" he asked slowly, dangerously. For a few seconds he and the Doctor stood frozen in place, their bodies tense and eyes locked, not even breathing, as if each was waiting for something from the other before either could move. The memory of the Weeping Angels flashed into Amy's mind, the creatures that could only move when no one was looking at them, trapped forever as stone if they ever met each other's gaze, and she found herself silently willing the Doctor to move, to dispel the illusion and prove he wasn't stone.

As it was, the Master moved first, breaking the tableau as he lunged forward and slapped the Doctor sharply across the face. The younger man winced and stumbled back a step, raising one hand to his cheek, but made no move to avoid the blow or retaliate. Amy and Rory both started forward angrily, planning to grab the Master and hold him back from their friend, but an urgent gesture from the Doctor stayed them, his meaning perfectly clear: _Keep back; don't go near him. _Reluctantly, the two traded helpless glances and remained where they were, Rory resting his hands on Amy's shoulders ready to restrain her if needed, Amy glaring with frustrated wrath at the blond alien.

The Master staggered and almost fell from the force of his own strike, barely catching himself by grasping the counter with one hand and collapsing against it, resting the side of his chest on its edge as he glared up at the Doctor with his teeth bared in a vicious snarl. "How many years?" he screamed, his rough voice breaking. "For how many years did I try to tell you, try to make you understand, and all you did was call me mad! 'Just your madness', you said, 'nothing there', you said, and never once did you bother to actually listen! I asked you for help, so many times I begged you to listen to me, and always you turned me away just like everyone else. _You _refused _me_, Doctor." The blond man abruptly straightened up and grinned maniacally at the Time Lord, his voice turning sing-song. "You said you'd always be there for me, that you'd always stand by me, and just look what happened," he said mockingly, spreading his arms.

The Doctor stood still, his head lowered and his cheek bright red where the Master had struck him, and he shifted uncomfortably as the other alien spoke. The look on his face was another one Amy had rarely seen on him, could only remember seeing after Rory had been killed and erased from time, a mix of shame, grief and regret. "I'm sorry, Master," he said again. "What else can I say?"

The Master gazed at him with a slightly furrowed brow and gave a cheerless huff of bitter amusement. "The Doctor out of words," he said. "Is the apocalypse here? All you do is talk and talk, and you never listen. I had to almost kill you before you'd listen to a word I said. Why wouldn't you listen? Why?" All the rage and strength seemed to drain out of him and he slumped in desolation, sliding down to sit on the floor with his back against the counter, and dropped his head into his arms, his fingers tangling in his tousled hair.

A sound vaguely like a choked sob emitted from the alien, and the Doctor stepped forward cautiously. When there was no response to his increased proximity, the Time Lord crouched down on the floor beside the blond man and silently wrapped his arms around him, drawing him as tightly to his chest as he could and rocking him gently. "It's all right," the Doctor said softly, stroking the Master's shoulder lightly with the tips of his long fingers. "Everything will be all right."

At his words, the Master wrenched himself away from the Doctor's embrace and leant against the counter again, chuckling with an edge of hysteria to his laugh. "Oh, you don't even know how far things are from all right," he managed to say, resting his head back and still sniggering uncontrollably. "Lost one thing just to gain another – or lose it, I suppose. No more drumming but still mad as ever; Rassilon made sure of that." He snickered again, looking rather self-satisfied as he added "Our dear Lord President wasn't particularly happy with me. He could hardly have me go to my death in peace after that, now, could he, not after I brought him to his knees before all of Gallifrey. Heh, twice. Shame no one else saw the second time – it was a good one. I even impressed myself there."

"Well, you always were known for your humble nature," the Doctor said solemnly, though with a teasing quirk to an eyebrow.

The Master gave him an amused glance and a slight lopsided grin. "Yeah," he drawled, wagging his head wryly. "That's me. Most modest person in the universe, I am." He hummed softly, some of the tension visibly leaving his shoulders, and the two aliens sat in almost companionable silence, the Doctor still crouched at the Master's side.

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**A/N: Apologies for the abrupt ending – the chapter was getting massively long and needed to be broken into two parts, and this was the best break point near the halfway mark. The next chapter will pick up right where this one leaves off.**


	3. Discovery  Part 2

**A/N: Thanks to everyone for your reviews – it really makes me ridiculously happy to see that people are liking this! ^^**

**LeonaWriter – **Aw, thank you! ^^ Those two definitely have a lot of history to work around, and they didn't get much of an opportunity to do so in End of Time after the Doctor heard the drums. They're also both different men now in a way, and they haven't quite worked each other out yet.

**Aietradaea – **Thank you so much! :) Yes, poor Master – I kind of feel bad for all that I put him through, but at least things are starting to improve for him now. *is poked* But 'rescuing two Time-Locked maniacs with one Time Lock break' doesn't have the same metaphorical ring! X)

**GuesssWho – **Awww, I feel sorry for him, too; at least he gets some biscuits out of it by the end. ^^

**Brownbug, The Master Of Time, pride1289 and tigriss – **Many thanks for your reviews and comments, and I'm so glad you're all enjoying it! :D

**Disclaimer: **_**Doctor Who **_**and all related content and characters belong to the BBC; no infringement is intended.**

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Amy couldn't quite figure the two aliens out. First it had looked like the Master wanted to kill the Doctor, and rather worryingly like the Doctor might let him, and then the Master had crumbled into a whimpering wreck with the Doctor trying to comfort him, and now they were calmly sitting together like old friends who'd bumped into each other at the park. The Master was obviously unstable, and it made her apprehensive to see him so close to the Doctor when it seemed he might lunge for the throat at any second. The Doctor didn't seem too worried though and, given that he obviously knew the man and she didn't, for now it seemed she would have to trust his judgment, however much she wanted to dash forward and hurl the lunatic away from her Doctor.

"So," the Doctor said after a bit, shifting his weight to his other foot and tilting his head as he gazed at the Master. "You're back again. I can't even imagine how you escaped Rassilon, let alone the Time Lock." His expression was inquisitive, and there was a hint of admiration in his voice that made the Master smirk arrogantly, although the smirk faded into a slight serious frown as he contemplated the implied question in the Doctor's statement.

A soft pattering sound caught Amy's attention, and she realized that the blond alien was tapping his fingers lightly against the dirt-covered floor, marking out a steady four-beat rhythm as he thought. It seemed oddly familiar somehow, like something she'd heard in a film or a song that she couldn't quite place. The Master's voice broke into her musings and made her blink with surprise as he said "A Dalek saved me."

"A _Dalek_?" Amy said in disbelief, exchanging a glance with Rory. "Who ever heard of a Dalek going around saving people? I thought they were usually all 'Ex-_ter_-min-ate! Ex-_ter_-min-ate!' with their little egg-beater thingies." The Master flinched reflexively at her Dalek imitation and closed his eyes, looking sick, and Amy belatedly recalled how the Doctor had reacted with such hatred and fear the first time they'd come across the Daleks. They hadn't seemed so bad to her – certainly frightening, but nothing as bad as the Angels – but the Doctor had obviously had far worse experiences with them. He had once mentioned a war between the Time Lords and the Daleks, the terrible war his people had lost, resulting in their extinction, and as bad experiences went that had to be a big one.

Considering the strange alien's reaction to the Daleks and his use of a title instead of a name, Amy wondered if the Master was another of the Doctor's kind, another Time Lord. The Doctor had said they were all gone, but then he had been very shocked to see the Master, looked at him like he was a ghost… Amy nudged Rory and gave a slight jerk of her head significantly toward the Master, not wanting to voice her theory in front of the alien but wanting to communicate somehow to her husband what she was thinking. Rory looked at her blankly, and Amy rolled her eyes with a frustrated growl and decided to wait until later. Rory didn't do well with hinting.

"It was a different sort of Dalek," said the Master with a slightly sharp tone. "I don't even know how it reached me. I was in the Citadel, what was left of it, down in the cells, but somehow it teleported in, right through the force fields." He paused for a second, gazing vacantly at the floor. "I thought I was dead. I heard its voice and I thought for sure I was dead. And instead it saved me, brought me here. Why would it do that?" he asked, turning his eyes to the Doctor in perplexity. "It never said, just kept giggling and babbling on about seeing something."

The Doctor's eyebrows shot up. "Dalek Caan? Did he say his name; was it Caan?" The Master stared at him, his brow knitted in bewilderment, and the Doctor waved his hand quickly. "Cult of Skaro, flew through the time vortex, very insane. He broke through the Time Lock to rescue Davros from the Nightmare Child – maybe he went and saved you at the same time. It certainly sounds like him, with the whole giggling thing. Most Daleks don't giggle."

"You know many Daleks?" the Master asked with a wry twist to his mouth.

"Too many," was the grim reply.

The Master frowned again with puzzlement and held one hand up in a pausing gesture. "You said the Daleks were dead. Them and the Time Lords both, they were all destroyed within the Time Lock. You _said_."

"They got out," said the Doctor, his face darkening with that old anger Amy remembered from when they had met the Daleks in the British war bunker. "Just a few, but they got out. So many times I've thought that it was over and that they were defeated for good, and every time they come back. No matter what I do, no matter what I sacrifice, nothing ever stops them from finding a way back."

The Master mulled that over for a minute and then gave a soft humourless laugh. "You make them sound like me." He sighed and rested his head back against the counter with a dull thud. "So, the Daleks survived and the Time Lords died for nothing. Not that it was much of a loss, I suppose." At the Doctor's appalled expression, he snorted. "I find it difficult to have much sympathy for them anymore," he said bitterly with a slight sneer. "In truth it's been my one consolation through this that they all died in burning agony. They deserved it, every one of them." After a second he hastily added "Ah, not your mother though. She wasn't like them; she'd been against the whole 'Gallifrey rising' plan from the start. Actually tried to stand up for me, I guess for saving you, but you can probably imagine how that went."

"She always was fond of you," the Doctor said with a sad sigh. "I doubt Rassilon took it very well if she tried to protect you."

Grimacing and keeping his face angled slightly away from the Doctor, the Master shook his head slowly and swallowed hard. "He killed her. Used the glove and turned her into dust where she stood." His eyes darted sideways at the Doctor before dropping to his hands, and Amy could see his jaw working as he thought over his next words. Finally he scrunched his face up and shifted uneasily, casting another quick look at the Doctor before saying "I'm sorry."

The Doctor stared at the floor for a moment, tracing patterns in the dust with the tip of one finger. "One way or another, I knew she was dead," he said quietly. "I suppose on the bright side at least now I know I wasn't the one who killed her. If that counts as a bright side."

"Well, if you think about it, you…" the Master started, but he let his voice trail off again without finishing the thought, instead pursing his lips and picking at the stained bandages on his hands with apparent great interest. After a few seconds he started anew, saying, "At least it was fast, right? That matters to people, doesn't it? They always say stuff like that, 'Oh, at least he went quickly', so I guess it matters. Not like it makes much difference to the dead person – I mean, they aren't likely to remember it either way. But disintegration is certainly faster than being burnt alive. Probably hurts a lot more while it's happening, but it's over a much shorter time and there isn't as much left to clean up afterward, so that's a plus."

The Doctor drew in a deep breath and stood, absently brushing out the creases in his trouser legs with one hand as he did so. "While I appreciate what you're trying to do, or rather what I _think_ you're trying to do, and really I'm quite surprised you're trying at all, I'd prefer if we didn't talk about it."

"Suit yourself," said the Master distantly. His eyes had an almost glassy look to them and his face had gone peculiarly blank, and Amy noticed that he was tapping his fingers again. That was of little interest to her compared to this revelation about the Doctor's mother though. Somehow, even though the Doctor had told her he was the very last of his kind, she'd never thought about how that meant that his parents were dead, too, and she thought back to when she'd been a little girl, back in the alternate timeline that now had never happened where her parents were both gone. She could remember what it felt like to be an orphan. Rory nudged her hand with his, and Amy glanced over in surprise to see his sympathetic expression as he studied her face. With a smile she slipped her hand into his and squeezed it; clueless though he was in a lot of ways, Rory could always tell what she was feeling and how to make it better.

Seeing the vacant expression on the Master's face, the Doctor leant over him quickly and waved a hand in front of his dazed eyes. "Master? Still with us?" There was no response from the other Time Lord, and the Doctor crouched before him and very tentatively poked his shoulder with one finger. Even from her position a couple of counters away, Amy realized that the Master was trembling, staring into nothing with a growing terror in his eyes.

Looking worried now, the Doctor reached up and rested the palm of his hand against the Master's cheek, his fingers curling around behind the other alien's head and threading through his raggedy blond hair. The result was explosive; as soon as the Master realized he was being touched he jerked violently to the side to escape the contact, whacking the Doctor's hand away from him and scrambling back. "Don't," he snarled, holding one bandaged hand before him to ward off any other attempts. "Don't, don't, don't, never _ever_ do that, don't. Not _ever_."

His hand hanging forgotten in the air, the Doctor stared at the Master, who had curled up in a ball again and was visibly shaking, and after a second his eyes widened with sympathetic understanding. He dropped his hand and edged forward to crouch in front of the other man, gazing kindly into his hazel eyes. "I would never go into your mind without asking; you know I wouldn't," he said sincerely. "I was concerned for you, that was all – you looked so…" He paused, searching for a description that wouldn't mortally offend the Master's pride, finally settling with "…uneasy." The Master's jaw twitched but, though he was still eying the Doctor askance, he let the other Time Lord shuffle up beside him without more than a wary squint of mild suspicion. "Let me help you," the Doctor said. "Whatever's been done to your mind, we can try to fix it, heal the damage."

The Master sighed, closing his eyes wearily. "I doubt you'd have much success," he said, his voice sounding almost normal for a moment, not frenetic or sarcastic but simply resigned.

"We can still try," was the reply. "Even a small amount of success is better than nothing, isn't it? Even if all we manage is to put you a little more at ease, take away the worst of it, that's something." Watching the Master for any warning of further violence, the Doctor reached forward slowly and gingerly took hold of his hands, turning them over to eye the jagged gashes and scrapes that covered his palms and fingers. "These should be taken care of as well; what have you done to yourself?"

The Master shrugged unconcernedly with one shoulder, starting to seem a little more alert. "It looks worse than it is. I had to make tools out of whatever I could find, mostly scrap metal and concrete, and that gets hard on the hands pretty quickly. Wrapping the tool handles didn't help much, so I wrapped my hands up instead and put up with it. No other option."

"Well, at least it's an easier problem to fix." The Doctor dug around in his pockets for a bit, finally producing a silvery tube and undoing the cap on it. "I picked this up last time I was in New New York," he said, carefully untying the knotted bandages on the Master's right hand and pulling them away from his injuries. "It should help with the pain and speed up the healing, and it's certified cruelty free with no human testing, too, which is a nice change for them."

The Master gave him a confused look and opened his mouth to respond, but then he winced and yanked his hand back reflexively as the Doctor tried to remove a section of blood-caked cloth that had adhered to a deep cut. His own rough action tore open the gash afresh, and the Master yelped and clutched his hand to his chest protectively, huddling over it and twisting away from the Doctor with a growl when the other tried to reach for it again.

The Doctor sighed in frustration and rested his arms across his knees. "Well, I am sorry, but you did that yourself and you know it. Now, you can either sit there feeling sorry for yourself and in no better condition than when I started, or you can let me finish working and get those cuts treated properly. While you're deciding which you would prefer, I shall be sitting here enjoying a biscuit." With that, the Doctor sat down next to the Master and pulled a brown paper bag from his pocket, from which he drew a Jammie Dodger that he leisurely proceeded to munch on with no sign of concern.

The other Time Lord stared at him for a moment in puzzlement, still sheltering his hand, and he turned his shoulders away from the snacking Doctor with another low growl, pretending to ignore him. After a few seconds, he shot a surreptitious glance back to see the Doctor still eating the biscuit without an apparent care in the world. The Master huffed and started picking at the dangling end of the bandage, trying to work it free from the freshly bleeding wound, but there wasn't much he could do one-handed without tugging at it and he quickly abandoned the effort. Another moment passed, and the blond Time Lord suddenly clenched his hand into a fist and curled around it in a tight ball with a sharp indrawn hiss of pain, rocking on his heels slightly in apparent agony. He gave a pitiful whimper and furtively shifted his head to see the effect of this on the Doctor, who merely pulled a second biscuit from the bag and started eating that, too.

At that, the Master snapped his teeth in irritation and sat up sharply, giving the Doctor a foul look as he did so and childishly stamping his foot when that went ignored as well. Finally, unable to provoke any response with his histrionics, he huffed with a scowl like a wet cat and held his hand out toward the Doctor, keeping the rest of his body turned resolutely away from the other man. The Doctor smiled to himself and set the bag aside, brushing biscuit crumbs off his fingers with the leg of his trousers before gently taking hold of the Master's hand and continuing his ministrations as if nothing had happened.

As the bandage was unwound, the Master flinched but didn't pull away again, and the Doctor soon had the filthy cloth uncoiled and lying in a pile before him. "There we are," the brown-haired Time Lord said happily before picking up the tube of healing cream. "Now, hold still and let me get this on; it might sting a bit but it should help a great deal." The Master started to tug his hand back at the word 'sting' but, at the Doctor's slightly raised eyebrow and significant glance toward the bag of Jammie Dodgers, he reconsidered, slumping with defeat and leaning against the counter resignedly as the Doctor applied the cream to his wounds. Despite a few initial winces and grumbles that were most likely feigned, the Master soon stopped his complaints and sat quietly, his shoulders gradually relaxing as the balm worked as promised.

Rory and Amy stood cautiously by watching the pair, and Amy tilted her head curiously as she saw that the Master was tapping the fingers of his left hand against the floor again; it seemed to be a habit for the man. The pattern nagged at the back of her mind, and it occurred to her that the Master himself seemed vaguely familiar as well, though she had no idea where she could have seen him before. Certainly not when she was with the Doctor, and somehow she very much doubted the alien had ever visited Leadworth. Still, he knew what humans were and was wearing what might have been Earth clothing, and if he'd been trying to find the Doctor… could he have followed the Doctor's trail to Leadworth of all places? He would have stood out if he had ever gone there, Amy thought with a faint smirk. Apart from just being a stranger in the village, any man who had dyed his hair platinum blond would have had the whole village gossiping like mad for days. It would have passed as big news in Leadworth.

Unable to place him looking as he was, Amy tried to imagine him with dark hair instead. And clean, which was quite a stretch. That brought the vaguest of recollections to her mind, something to do with that four-beat pattern again, though it seemed to her that she remembered it as beeping. _Beep beep beep beep_. _Beep beep beep beep_. A newscast alert of some sort? Actually, hadn't that been the sound used to announce stuff during the elections a few years back, the one with… Her brain ground to a halt. No way. There was absolutely no possible way. But then there was his voice - rough though it was, now that she'd made the connection she could hear the similarity under the hoarseness – and that sharp bright grin… "Saxon," she said in shock. "You're Harold Saxon. Oh my god, Harold Saxon was an alien!"

The Master gave her a withering look before turning back to the Doctor, who was trying to extract a large roll of white dressings from his left jacket pocket, and jerked his head in Amy's direction. "Where'd you pick this one up?"

"England. I landed in her garden when she was seven, and she had an alien serial killer hiding in her house and a time crack in her wall that ate her parents," the Doctor replied distractedly as he wound a fresh bandage around the Master's hand. "And then I left and came back and she hit me with a cricket bat."

"Twelve. _Years,_" Amy said stubbornly before returning to her original line of thought. "But how can you be Saxon; he died! It was all over the papers for weeks – he murdered President Winters and shot himself."

"_What?_" the Master growled, giving her an indignant glare. "Who said I shot myself? I never did – that was Lucy's handiwork, that one. Right in the gut, too; hurt like hell. Hmm." He grinned suddenly with what looked like genuine amusement, and the smile was exactly as Amy had remembered it from the broadcasts on the telly, the sort of smile you expected to see the light reflecting off of with an audible 'ting'. "I do wonder what the response to all that was from the people who'd voted me in. There must've been so many 'I Voted Saxon' shirts anonymously donated to homeless shelters."

"I never voted for you," Amy said, holding a finger up. "Everyone kept telling me I should vote Saxon, so I voted for the other guy instead."

The Master scoffed. "Yeah, and I bet you don't even remember his name, right?"

"Nope. I never actually read what his name was; I just looked for the little box that didn't have 'Saxon' beside it and ticked that one. Hmm, they never did mention any bodies, now I think of it," she continued. "Saxon's or Winters'. A lot of people thought there was some big cover-up by the government."

"Oh, I'll bet there was," the Master said with a slight chuckle, examining the spotless white bandage on his right hand. The clean dressing stood out markedly against his dirty skin, and he rubbed vaguely at some of the larger patches of grime on his fingers before the Doctor grabbed his left hand to change the bandage on that one as well. This time the blond man didn't put up any fuss about it, content to let the Doctor work and more interested in the bag of biscuits that was sitting unattended nearby. With a quick look at the other Time Lord to make sure he wasn't watching, the Master snuck his free hand into the bag and pulled out a handful of the biscuits, which he promptly shoved into his mouth, chewing ravenously and gulping them down as fast as he could while reaching for more.

The Doctor let him devour another handful before pulling the bag out of the Master's reach, provoking a vicious snarl from the other man. "You'll make yourself sick if you eat too much," the Doctor said gently, laying one hand lightly against the Master's chest to stop him from lunging after the biscuits. "Your system isn't used to food like that anymore – you'll have to take things gradually and easily, and a massive amount of highly refined processed sugars straight out of the gate isn't the way to go." He rubbed the blond Time Lord's shoulder calmingly and gave it a slight squeeze. "Once we're all back at the TARDIS we can get you some proper food, something that'll be easier for your system to handle."

The Master slumped back against the counter with a despondent sigh, still eying the paper bag hungrily, but then he froze and looked up at the Doctor in surprise. "All? You mean… I can come with you? You won't leave me here?" His voice was trembling, pathetically hopeful and almost timid, and he stared intently into the Doctor's eyes, searching them for any indication of his thoughts one way or the other.

Moving slowly so as not to alarm him, the Doctor very gently placed both of his hands on the Master's shoulders. "I would never leave you here," he said earnestly.

"Heh," the Master said with a weak smile and a nervous swallow. "You've changed then. In the old days you had no problem with -"

"The old days are gone now," said the Doctor firmly. "And I'm rather inclined to think it's for the best. It's time to start again, you and me; no more fighting or rivalry, no plots or tricks, no trying to one-up each other all the time, just us getting to see the universe together. Seeing the whole of creation, all the marvels of the cosmos, free to go wherever we please in all time and space…" He smiled and cocked his head slightly. "Everything's changed. Maybe now that the drumming has stopped you can find out who you were meant to be."

"Oh, you did _not_ just make this out to be some magical journey of self-discovery," the Master groaned in theatrical disgust, letting his head fall back against the counter with a slight thunk. "That's just… You've spent far too much time on Earth, Doctor – you're starting to absorb their clichés." The Doctor smiled and returned to his ministrations, and the Master watched him for a moment, his expression slowly growing more serious. "What if I was always going to be like this anyway?" he asked quietly. "What if the drums were just an excuse and I was always going to be a monster?"

The Doctor shook his head. "I don't think you were. I know who you were before the drumming and I know who you were when you were able to fight their influence, and in neither case were you anything like a monster. I don't expect you'll ever be a saint, mind, but you're no monster either." He smiled affectionately at the other Time Lord. "Actually, there have been times when I've honestly thought you were the greatest man I've ever known."

The Master stared at him in shock, his expression shifting rapidly between suspicion of mockery and an almost heartbreaking vulnerability, and Amy suddenly remembered his words earlier: '_Never a kind word, no matter what I do. Not once_.' At the other's expression the Doctor started to raise his hand to the Master's face again, but then he recalled the Master's reaction to the friendly gesture last time and changed course to pat his shoulder warmly instead. "Not necessarily _recent_ times, mind, but they have been known to occur. And I would be honoured if you would travel with me."

The Master leaned back, suspicion briefly winning out in the battle of different emotions across his face. "As what? Your prisoner? Your _pet_?"

"As a friend, I hope, at least eventually," the Doctor replied. "We've both been in our fair share of prisons, and I have no intention of turning the TARDIS into one, not anymore. If you want to leave, I won't stop you, but I hope you'll stay. There's so much more to the universe than power or revenge, so many wonderful things to be seen and discovered, things you wouldn't even begin to imagine possible but somehow manage to exist in all their absurdity and majesty…" The Master was giving him a dubious look, and the Doctor paused and added "Did I mention that we also have food?"

That made the Master chuckle and shake his head wearily, and the blond Time Lord sighed and stared blankly up at the dome ceiling, lightly thudding his head against the counter behind him as he thought. "I suppose I don't have much of a choice, regardless of your intent," he said. "You could be planning to chop me up for sausages and it would still be better than staying here."

"I promise I won't turn you into sausages or any other foodstuff. You'd probably taste dreadful anyway." Before the affronted Master could start insisting that he would be delicious as sausages, the Doctor drew out his sonic screwdriver and ran a brief scan over the other Time Lord. "Speaking of which, you should get some real food soon – you're severely dehydrated and quite undernourished."

"Yeah, fifty-year-old food replication packs don't make for great nourishment," the Master said drily as the Doctor rose to his feet. "As for hydration, it last rained here about… oh, three months ago, give or take, so water's getting pretty low." The Doctor held out his hand to the Master and, after a moment of eying the other man guardedly, the Master took hold of it and let the Doctor help him up. As soon as he had his feet securely under him, he batted the aiding hand away disdainfully and turned a condescending look on the two humans. "So, who are your new little friends?"

"Ah, yes, introductions!" The Doctor waved an elegant hand toward each of his companions in turn. "Amy and Rory, this is the Master, an old… er… acquaintance of mine. Master, meet Amelia Pond and her husband Rory P–"

"Williams," Rory interjected quickly.

"Pond."

With a bit of a sneer, the Master raked his eyes over them critically. "They look a bit scruffy, even for your tastes," he said, gesturing at Rory, who looked down at his less-than-stylish clothes and tugged at his jacket self-consciously.

Amy gave an incredulous squawk and crossed her arms, giving the Master a slight scowl for the hypocritical insult to her fashion sense. "Excuse me, mister, but we're not the ones wearing more dirt than clothing!"

"That's Mister Master to you," the blond Time Lord snipped back, and he grinned as Amy glowered and rolled her eyes at him. He glanced slyly toward the Doctor, still smirking slightly. "Got a bit of a temper, does she? Well, this could be fun."

"Now," the Doctor said sternly, "behave. And that goes for both of you." He pointed back and forth between the Master and Amy a few times, giving each of them meaningful looks, and then spun on his heel and snapped his fingers before pointing off to the north-east. "To the TARDIS now, I think."

"Um, Doctor, I'm pretty sure the TARDIS is that way," Rory said, jerking his thumb south-east.

"Yeeee-es," the Doctor said, slowly twirling around to point in the right direction. "That's what I meant to say. Come along, Ponds, Master." The bow-tied Time Lord set off determinedly in the direction of the TARDIS and, after a moment of exchanging suspicious glances and narrow expressions, the Master and the two humans followed him, the Master still slightly unsteady on his feet but appearing somewhat restored by biscuits.

After a few steps the Master stopped abruptly and turned as if he'd remembered something, and he darted back to the pile of clutter between the counters to pick up the smaller of the two screens stashed there. He held it for a few seconds, indecisively drumming his fingers lightly along its edge, and then nodded briefly and stood, tucking the screen against his side and trotting after the Doctor, who had paused to wait for him. The other Time Lord looked at him curiously as he approached, pointing at the screen in silent query. The Master shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. "I needed _something_ to keep me busy," he said defensively. "The computer circuitry wouldn't work in the replicators and was just lying around, and I was bored so I made a television out of it. It was supposed to be a computer, but all the processors I found were fried, so..." He shrugged, and the Doctor nodded as if building complex electronic devices out of scrap circuitry was nothing out of the ordinary, which to him it probably wasn't.

"I never tried using it - I certainly wasn't about to waste power cells on a toy, and the reception here's probably terrible anyway," the Master said wryly. "It was just something to occupy the time, but… it would be a waste to leave it without testing it out." He said it in a very offhand way, but despite his dismissive tone he was clasping the little screen to himself, holding it almost protectively under his arm. The Doctor raised an eyebrow, but shrugged and gestured onward after Amy and Rory without comment, and the two Time Lords fell into step with each other as they followed the humans. The four continued for the TARDIS, the Doctor occasionally providing a discreet supporting arm to the Master and pretending not to notice when he pretended not to be leaning on it, and soon they had left the crumbling domes of the abandoned settlement behind them.

* * *

**A/N: Whew, one more chapter to go in this particular segment. The last part was actually written first and was originally meant to be the prologue, so it's going to need a fair bit of reworking now that its first three paragraphs have become three whole chapters. I'm still not entirely sure how that happened.**


	4. Discovery Part 3

**A/N: Whew, that took longer than expected – this went from about 1500 words to over 7000 by the end. o.O Now we finally get to see a bit of what the Doctor and the Master think about this whole thing…**

**First, on to my wonderful reviewers! ^^**

**Grumpr – **Thanks! ^^ Amy was born in 1989, which I think would make her 17 or 18 during the elections; admittedly she may still have been a bit too young to have voted, in which case we can just say she voted in a mock election at school or something. :)

**Renart **– He is a bit lost right now, poor guy. ): As for the cracks, he'd probably just think it was such a wasted opportunity – if _he'd_ been the one to reboot the universe, he'd have made sure to recreate it _properly_, i.e. with himself set as the Supreme Master Overlord of Everything. XD

**Aietradaea** – Thank you! The Master does tend to find whole new ways of becoming even more messed up than he already was, doesn't he? Poor guy – the whole Harold Saxon thing went from one of his most brilliant schemes to an ignominious incident he'd rather forget happened.

**dont-call-me-koschei** – Thank you so much! :) The idea of Dalek Caan rescuing the Master came to me fairly randomly and then refused to leave, and I couldn't resist having Eleven and the Master traveling together along with the Ponds.

**GuesssWho** – The Doctor hopes so, too. O.O

**tigriss** – Aw, thanks! Those two can be quite cute together, in a dysfunctional sort of way. ^^

**The Master Of Time** – Thank you! ^^ The Doctor shares your paranoia where the Master is concerned – it seems a good life strategy around him.

**LeonaWriter** – This whole thing was originally not even 600 words long, but I'm glad I expanded on it. ^^ And then expanded more... and more... Aw, thank you! :D I suspect the other candidate is doomed to be remembered forever as 'the other guy', and even that's only by the people who remember he existed at all.

**Mabudachi-trio – **Thanks! :) I'm always glad to hear people think I'm getting the personalities right. ^^

**Disclaimer: **_**Doctor Who **_**and all related content and characters belong to the BBC; no infringement is intended.**

**

* * *

**The TARDIS's orange interior lights were turned down low, the ship settled into a quiet hum in the background, and Amy and Rory had already retired to their room for what passed as the night on the TARDIS. Alone on the control deck, the Doctor rested his arms against the railing and stared down at the sleeping figure curled up on a cushioned bench the Doctor had set up for him below the main platform. _How could he have come back?_ he wondered. _Trapped in the Time Lock, surrounded by the war with Rassilon himself against him, and still the Master got out. Again. What I wouldn't give for his luck!_ The Doctor chuckled and ducked his head with a smile as it occurred to him that, really, his own luck tended to defy all reason on a regular basis, too – he wouldn't have reached even half his current age if it hadn't. _And unlike him I'm still somewhat sane_, he thought, gazing down at the Master's sleeping form. He looked so much smaller when he was asleep, nestled into the cushions like a child, no manic grin or predatory stare betraying the turmoil in his mind, no constantly tapping fingers beating out the pounding rhythm that had seared into his brain over the centuries. He almost looked innocent.

The Doctor drew in a quick breath and spun around to face the controls again, fussing with various stabilizers and switches to keep his mind occupied. The Master was far from innocent – true, he had saved the Doctor's life and nearly destroyed himself doing it, but that was a mere drop in the bucket against all the vile things he had done in his life. Still, he had seen a change in the Master in their last encounters on Earth, a willingness to reach out that had never been there before, and in those few seconds when their eyes had met during the final confrontation with Rassilon, when they had each spared the other's life, there had been a sense of connection that the Doctor hadn't felt between them for a very long time. It was a glimmer of hope in the darkness, and if there was one thing the Doctor had learned in his long life it was to never give up on even the smallest speck of hope.

Not that the Master was going to make it easy to resist chucking him out into the vortex. It was a curious thing about the Master, the Doctor mused, that he always had to push everything to see how far he could go before it broke, no matter how serious the result would be if he did actually break it. Upon their arrival at the TARDIS, the Doctor had made good on his promise of wholesome nourishing food, which the Master had devoured despite whinging about the blandness and revolting texture of it any time his mouth had been partially unfilled. The meal seemed to bring back his old enjoyment of aggravating people, and as soon as the Master had realized the Doctor was in earnest about letting him stay in the TARDIS he had set about being as annoying as possible, mocking everything from Amy's accent to the Doctor's braces to Rory in general and specific. Fortunately the massive amount of food – the Doctor was sure the man must have wolfed down more than his own body weight, despite his advice of moderation – had also made the Master drowsy, and within minutes of polishing off his meal he'd fallen asleep. Deciding that waking him up would likely be a very bad idea, they had left him to his sleep on the bench, the Ponds soon going to bed themselves and leaving the Doctor to watch over their unexpected visitor.

It was obvious the Master's mind had been damaged in some way, almost certainly by Rassilon from what the Master had said, and the Doctor wasn't entirely sure what to do about it, or even if there was anything that could be done. When he had touched the Master's face back in the outpost, he hadn't been trying to go into the Master's mind or even skim the surface for stray thoughts, and yet even at that minor contact he'd clearly sensed the other Time Lord's mind, a chaotic cacophony of horrific images and sounds all mixed together with a deep-seated terror. That the Master would ever let his guard down so far had shocked the Doctor but, before he could make sense of anything in the tangle of broken memories, the Master had shoved him away. The fact that he had retreated physically rather than block him mentally was the main thing that had made the Doctor realize that the Master's mental barriers weren't just down. They were gone. Somehow his mind's defences had been stripped away, leaving him utterly open and vulnerable to telepathic intrusions, even accidental ones as the Doctor's had been.

There had been something odd about the memories he had felt, also. They had been fractured, certainly, consistent with someone having gone through the Master's mind with the grace and finesse of a sledgehammer, but there had been a strange floating sense to them, a lack of connection to their surroundings like they'd been dumped in a proverbial pile on the proverbial front doorstep. Some of the memories were clearly not the Master's - not unless he'd taken to dressing up as the President during the War, which the Doctor wouldn't put past him – and those ones were the worst of all, evil whispering things filled with blood and carnage, twisting around like snares to catch unwary thoughts that might fall within their reach, almost alive with their own malevolence at the edge of the darkness. The Doctor hadn't dared get too close for fear of seeing one of them clearly and being caught within it himself.

If the Master would consent to the Doctor going into his mind, there was a chance that he could at the very least subdue the worst of them, push them back into the dark where they belonged, and perhaps piece together some of the damage that had been done. However, there wasn't much chance of the Master ever trusting anyone that far, especially not now. In all their lives, he had only once allowed the Doctor so much as a glimpse of his mind, back in the wasteland on Earth when he made the Doctor hear the incessant drumming in his head, and that had been very much on the Master's own terms and under his full control. Getting the notoriously distrustful Time Lord to accept the Doctor accessing his mind when he was unable to control the situation would be improbable to the point of impossibility.

The Doctor sighed and returned to the railing, looking down almost sadly at the Master as he slept. 'Acquaintance', he'd called him, not knowing what else to say. 'Friend' was far too warm a word for their often violently rocky relationship, but he still cared a little too much for the renegade to truly call him an enemy, despite all they'd put each other through, and he had a sneaking suspicion the Master held vestiges of affection for him as well. Admittedly he had very odd ways of showing it – the Doctor still winced at the sight of plastic dog bowls – but when it came right down to it, the Master rarely did him serious harm in cold blood. When the Doctor had been completely at his mercy on the Valiant, the Master had inflicted nothing worse on him than aging and the occasional backhand, and in the Naismith mansion he had again done him no real injury apart from the damage to his pride. For all the Master's threats of diabolical tortures and humiliations that he planned to inflict upon the Doctor, remarkably few had ever been implemented.

Nevertheless, it would be bordering on idiocy to trust in the Master having honest intentions, and the Doctor was no idiot – he had already programmed several precautionary measures into the TARDIS's systems such that anyone attempting to hack into them would get a very nasty surprise, and the console had been isomorphically locked against the Master with the blood from the old bandages. The TARDIS herself had been more than willing to pitch in with her own methods of ensuring the Master kept his hands off of her, and all that was left was to investigate the Master's meagre possessions. The device he had claimed to be a television was tucked securely under the sleeping Time Lord's arm, foiling the Doctor's hopes of scanning it, but so far it seemed innocuous enough. Still, the Doctor had never yet known the Master to make anything that didn't have at least one lethal function, so he wasn't inclined to believe his assertions that it was just a toy and nothing else. The man couldn't even make a daffodil without adding in a kill setting. No matter how innocent an object's intended function, the Master had a brilliant way of working tricks and traps into everything he touched and, until he'd managed to analyze that 'television', the Doctor wasn't going to let it out of his sight or anywhere near the console or his friends. For the time being though, it appeared he would have to wait to test his suspicions about the device and hope that the TARDIS was sufficiently well-guarded against the Master's possible schemes.

Left with nothing else productive to do with his time and no one to talk at, the Doctor drummed his fingers lightly against the rail with boredom and spun slowly around to eye the console again. There had been an annoying squeak in the TARDIS's machinery that he'd been meaning to fix for the last few days, and so, after another glance at the Master to be sure he was still asleep, the Doctor drew a spanner and his screwdriver out of his pocket and dropped under the glass console platform to examine the workings below it. If everyone else was determined to be dull and sleep for the next several hours, he might as well put the time to good use, he thought, and before long he was happily tinkering with gears and wires under the control centre. The whole Master issue could wait until tomorrow – for now there was jiggery-pokery to be done.

* * *

The Master awoke to the sound of bangs and a female yelling in a strong accent that he vaguely identified as Scottish – the Doctor's human girl, he realized with a sneer of disgust. Why the Doctor adored the Earth females so, the Master could never understand, though he had to admit they were fun to play with when the mood struck. However, the Doctor's women were never fun, being inclined to pull nasty surprises like stealing vital components or having psionic shields built into their brains, not to mention that wretched Martha Jones girl.

Rubbing his eyes groggily with the back of one hand, the Master pushed himself upright with the other and stood, swaying slightly as his brain slowly roused itself. He'd been sleeping more and more during his time marooned at the outpost, having nothing worth being awake for – when you've seen one barren rocky wasteland, you've seen them all – and he was unaccustomed to actually bothering to fully wake up. The noise was making sleep impossible however, and he walked toward the main console platform, gazing around with mild interest at the TARDIS's new interior design. Lots of red and orange mixed with blue lights, staircases going off in all directions, what looked like flower pots embedded in the walls… He snorted softly to himself. The Doctor's sense of style certainly hadn't improved much since they'd last met. Come to that, he wasn't sure how long it had been since his last meeting with the Doctor; he had regenerated again, that much was obvious, but what had been months of solitude for the Master might have been only weeks for the Doctor or it might have been centuries. _Ah, time travel. It does tend to make a mess of a person's chronology_, he thought.

At least the memories were being fairly quiet for the time being, their constant hissing and whispering at the back of his mind having been partially subdued by his meal earlier. It felt almost strange to not be starving for once, though there was still a certain nagging hunger gnawing at his stomach that no amount of food had seemed able to touch. It seemed that Rassilon – he snarled silently at just the thought of the elder Time Lord – hadn't sealed the breach fully when he'd stabilized his body, though the Master had no idea what that might mean for his lifespan. He wasn't able to access the artron energy anymore, though he'd often tried during his exile on the moon. Of course, he had been very low on energy in general by that point, so perhaps… Casting a quick glance up at the platform where the Doctor and the human were bickering and hadn't appeared to have noticed him yet, the Master stealthily rubbed his hands over each other, trying to concentrate his energy into them. All it got him was a bit of frictional heat and a sharp twinge when he accidentally pressed down on the still-healing cuts under the white bandages, and he gave up the exercise with a disgruntled sigh and continued onward.

As he climbed the short flight of steps up to the control platform, he heard the strident girl complaining, something to do with a swimming pool, and the Doctor calling apologies from under the control column in the centre as he messed about with the wiring. "There!" the Doctor exclaimed abruptly, clambering backwards and rising to his feet. "All fixed now, no harm done. You know, some people would love to have a water feature in their bedroom; I've heard they can be very soothing."

"_Not_ when the water feature is pouring down from the ceiling right on to your bed!" the girl said sharply, leaning back against the railing. Her red hair was hanging in damp strings, little droplets of water forming at the ends, and she was wearing a blue robe over what looked like a very wet nightdress, and the Master grinned slightly as he imagined her reaction to the unexpected water feature's appearance. "Rory's going to be mopping up for _hours_ in there. How d'you even manage to rearrange the plumbing from here? All you're doing is mucking about with wires."

"Ah, well," the Doctor said, "everything in the TARDIS is controlled from the _heart_ of the TARDIS, which is…" His voice trailed off as he saw the Master standing at the top of the stairs watching him, and the girl followed the Doctor's gaze and spun around to face the new Time Lord, her expression dark and suspicious. "Ah. Yes. Perhaps we could discuss this another time, Pond," the Doctor said finally, tucking his sonic screwdriver back in his pocket. "Right now, I rather think we should take care of our guest."

The Master gave a short raspy laugh. "A guest, am I, Doctor? Well, that's a first. But yes, tell your little pet to be a good girl and run along now." He sidestepped sharply over to one of the tacky yellow chairs by the rails and sat on the edge of one, hunching forward and staring up at the Doctor with a bright brittle grin, head tilted. "We have ever so much catching up to do, you and I. How long has it been, Doctor? How long since Gallifrey was sent screaming back into hell by your hand?"

A muscle in the Doctor's jaw twitched, and he shifted his weight uneasily back and forth as he quietly replied "Not long. Not for me, anyway." The Master smirked in minor triumph to see he had provoked a reaction – he wasn't so out of practice, then, not so far gone that he couldn't still torment the Doctor with his words – but before he could continue needling the younger Time Lord, the Doctor's eyes brightened and he clapped his hands sharply, making the Master nearly fall off his seat at the unexpected loudness of it. _Really have to work on that damned noise sensitivity_, he thought with a wince. "Now!" the Doctor said cheerfully. "First things first, we need to get you cleaned up, because I suspect those are the same clothes you've been wearing since you were resurrected, am I right? They do look a bit tatty; in fact, I'd say they're practically non-existent, and I _think_ you're still blond but I can't actually tell for certain through the dirt, so I would strongly advise a bath or three as well before you start looking at clothes."

The Master blinked at the Doctor, unable to think of a response. While his mind did have a certain level of clarity at the moment, it was completely bewildered by the Doctor's ability to leap from one subject to another with no stops in between, let alone the fact that he seemed more concerned about the Master's admittedly disheveled state than by the Master being _on his ship_. However, the thought meandered by that perhaps the Doctor had no reason to fear him being on the TARDIS at present. Even apart from the Master having no particular desire to commandeer the ship or harm the Doctor at the moment, he rather doubted that he'd be able to steal the TARDIS again. Quite apart from any safeguards the Doctor might have put in place, the ship was alive, and it had memory. It wouldn't have forgotten how he tore its heart apart to construct the paradox machine around it, and it certainly wouldn't have forgiven him. Of course, there was that special bit of circuitry he'd squirreled away in his 'toy', but that was something to be saved for emergencies and golden opportunities, and this was neither; he had the patience to wait for the right moment to use it, and until then it would remain safely hidden away.

_He does have a point though_, the Master thought ruefully as he looked down at his clothes, or rather what was left of them. Time had been hard on them, and it hadn't helped that he'd had to tear strips off of his shirt and jeans to use in his repairs of the outpost's machinery and as wound dressings. What was left was little more than rags held on with strings. He sighed inwardly as he fingered the strands that were left of his black hoodie – different though it had been from his customary suits and fine fabrics, it had been a remarkably comfortable garment, and he'd developed a certain fondness for it. The harsh environment and rough living had soon taken its toll on the already-frayed hoodie though, reducing it to tattered scraps within months, and he found he rather missed it.

The fuzziness was coming back into his mind, the empty static that had filled his skull like a badly-tuned radio after the drums left it, and he suddenly felt so tired, like he hadn't slept in years. He closed his eyes and leant his head back, resting it against the bars behind the chair, and sighed again. There was no point in trying to start a quarrel with the Doctor over the matter, not when he honestly craved the opportunity to be clean for the first time in almost a year and really the first time in this body's life, and he didn't have the energy to have a go at him now anyway. Instead, the Master wearily got to his feet and spread his arms in surrender. "Where do I go?"

"Up the stairs, to the right, first door on your left," the Doctor said, twisting to point up the indicated stairway before turning back to the Master and clasping his hands in front of his chest with a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Do let me know if you need more soap." The Master gave him a withering look and stepped past him, a predatory grin rising to his face as he noted with satisfaction how the human girl Pond scuttled back as he went by. He was filthy, underfed and clothed in rags, but for all that he was still the Master. The smirk faltered though as no drums came thundering up to meet his aggression and press it forward, and he found himself wondering what there was to be proud of in scaring a pathetic Earthling girl. He dismissed the doubt as soon as it arose, putting it down to exhaustion and mental fatigue, and continued on his way to the TARDIS showers without another thought on the matter.

* * *

Once the Master had left and the Doctor was certain he'd actually gone, the brown-haired Time Lord poked his head over the railing to look down at the bench where the Master had been sleeping. As he'd hoped, the screen was sitting there alone and completely unguarded, and the Doctor hopped down the stairs and warily approached the device. Amy remained on the main platform at the top of the stairs, watching him with concern, and he heard her ask "Do you think it's safe, letting him just wander around the TARDIS like that?"

Not taking his eyes off of the screen, the Doctor turned his head slightly back toward her. "I am actually a bit busy at the moment, Pond," he replied testily. "I'd rather _not_ get blown up because I was answering a silly question instead of paying attention. But don't worry; I've taken care of it, and the TARDIS won't let him anywhere near the wiring or control panels anyway. It's one of the advantages of a slightly telepathic ship – she knows better than to let him start messing about with things." Taking a few more steps and stopping within a few metres of the device, he drew out his sonic screwdriver and held it at arm's length, pointing it at the screen, and he grit his teeth and flinched as he pressed down the screwdriver's switch and sent a brief sonic burst at the screen. To his mild surprise, there was no explosion in response. Edging closer, the Doctor prodded the screen with the tip of the screwdriver before setting the screwdriver to scan and waving it slowly over the device. There was still no response from the screen, and according to the scan it really was as the Master had said, lacking both a power source and a processor, as well as having nothing resembling laser beams, explosives, poisonous gasses, time distorters, tissue compressors or even razor blades contained within it.

Feeling rather disappointed, the Doctor lowered the screwdriver. "Well, that was anticlimactic," he said with a slight huff, and then he paused for a moment, watching the screen almost hopefully, but it failed to have any ironic reaction to the words and merely continued to sit innocently and silently on the bench.

"So, what is it?" Amy called down to him, leaning over the railing with her arms crossed comfortably over it.

The Doctor sighed. "It appears to be a television. Perfectly normal wiring and circuitry, nothing unidentified or out of the ordinary, no secret panels or switches, and no deadly traps or explosives whatsoever." Slipping the screwdriver back into his jacket pocket, the Doctor picked up the screen and turned it over carefully in his hands. "And that worries me, because, unless he's changed a great deal more than I think he has, that just means that I haven't found the trap yet."

Amy shrugged. "Maybe he wasn't able to find anything to make a trap out of. It wasn't like he had a lot of parts to choose from there."

"No, no, no," the Doctor said, waving a finger over his shoulder at Amy without turning around, still examining the screen. "You see, the Master's a genius; he could make a deadly weapon out of a teacup and two strings if he had to. If this can't be used to kill someone, that's by his own choice, not any limitation in material." He placed the screen carefully back on the bench, lining it up precisely with where it had been, and wandered back up to the console platform again, his brow furrowed in thought. "Then again, perhaps he has changed. If it truly was the drumming responsible for how he acted before, it's possible that he's not as violent now as he used to be." He paused and pressed his fingertips lightly together, turning slowly on his heel to face Amy at the top of the steps with a pensive expression. "Which admittedly still leaves him potentially very dangerous, but for now it seems we just have to give him the benefit of the doubt. While being very careful," he added seriously, emphasizing his last words with a pointed shake of his joined hands at her. "Don't trust him too far."

"I don't trust him at all," Amy said, her eyes narrowed. The Doctor sighed and gave her a mildly reproachful look as he stepped around her to flop down on one of the chairs, hooking his elbows over the railing, and Amy crossed her arms firmly over her chest with her familiar stubborn pout forming rapidly. "I _don't_. Harold Saxon was a crazy murderer, and he seems even more insane now than he was then. Have you seen the way he looks at people? Like we're something to eat." At that the Doctor tilted his head and hummed musingly, and Amy's eyes widened. "He wouldn't actually eat us, would he? Your… species, whatever, you don't eat people, do you? You don't. Doctor, tell me you don't eat people."

The Doctor shifted in his seat, gazing up at her with a slight smile. "Well… _I_ don't." Amy's glare nearly pinned him to the chair, and he unwound his arms from the railing to lean forward and clasp his hands in his lap. "The thing is, Amy, the Master… isn't quite normal, even by Time Lord standards." At Amy's snort he gave a slight nod of acknowledgment that it was a statement of the blazing obvious, and then he sat back and crossed his legs comfortably. "That body he has now, it was created out of nothing, made from pure energy shaped around his genetic code, and it needed constant feeding just to maintain itself. When he wasn't able to get enough actual food, he… went for whatever was available."

"Like… people?"

The Doctor grimaced and jittered in his chair, fingers twiddling madly. "Yeeee-es, sometimes like people. I'm sure he doesn't do that anymore though," he added hurriedly. "His body's stable now; he's not burning energy from it the way he was before or he'd be long since dead. I'm sure you've nothing to worry about on that score."

Amy shook her head incredulously. "He _eats_ people, and you tell me not to worry about it. We're living with a cannibal, an _alien_ cannibal –"

"Well, technically, since he is an alien and not human it wouldn't actually be –"

"Shuddup!" The Doctor opened his mouth once or twice with the urge to protest, but he decided against continuing in the face of potential Pond fury and simply crossed his arms and settled back in his chair sulkily. Amy watched him for a moment just to be sure he wasn't going to carry on with his lecture on cannibalism, and then flicked her ginger hair back over her shoulder and sat in the chair across the stairs from the Doctor. "What d'you mean, the body he has now? He looks about the same as he ever did, and someone would have noticed if Saxon was going around eating people."

"I could explain it to you, but _apparently_ you want me to shut up," the Doctor sniffed, turning his head away from her haughtily.

Amy stretched forward to punch him lightly in the shoulder and sat back looking pleased with herself when he grabbed his arm and made a complaining mewl at the abuse. "Oh, don't be like that, you big baby. What do you mean, like, he grew a new body or something?" she said, rolling her eyes but with a certain hesitation that suggested she half believed it could be true.

Before the Doctor could answer, a sharp bark of laughter made Amy's head whip around, and she jumped to her feet as the Master strolled down the stairway in a fresh set of clothes, his face cleaner but still unshaven and his slightly mad grin firmly in place. "What, didn't you tell her, Doctor?" He jumped down the last few steps to land in a partial crouch before Amy and rose up, staring fixedly at her, still grinning. "I came back from the dead."

The Doctor rose sharply and placed himself between Amy and the Master, taking Amy's arm and gently spinning her off toward the other side of the platform. It appeared the man had shifted into a more manic state of mind again, and despite his own assurances he wasn't entirely confident that the Master might not try to take a bite out of someone if he felt like it. Though, knowing Amy, she would probably bite back. "Rather you had your cult resurrect you but, yes, I suppose to all intents and purposes that would be true." He stepped back to look critically at the Master, who raised an eyebrow and mockingly held out his arms to present himself for inspection. "Hmm, you seem to be wearing almost the same outfit – I thought you'd go for a suit again or perhaps something with gold braid on it. A hoodie seems a bit plebian for your usual tastes, but it's your choice, I suppose. You should try a bow tie some time; have you ever worn a bow tie? There was the cravat, but I don't think that counts. Ah, and yes, you are still blond. I thought you were. I'm still not sure what to think of that – you've never been blond before, and it takes a bit of getting used to."

The Master shook his head slowly with a scornful _tch_. "Listen to yourself, Doctor. Don't you ever stop blathering on?"

"No, I don't believe I do," said the Doctor, looking pleased. "How are the bandages?" he asked with a gesture at the Master's hands.

The other Time Lord glanced at the rather clumsily retied bandages disinterestedly and shrugged. "They'll do."

"Perhaps I ought to –"

"_No._"

The Master's glare was enough to convince the Doctor not to attempt offering any further assistance, and instead he gave a conceding tilt of his head and flopped down on his chair again, lacing his fingers together over his knee. "Very well, then, if that's how you're going to be. So, now, this Dalek, the one that rescued you, did he say anything about why?"

"We didn't exactly chat," the Master said drily, sitting across from him in the chair Amy had vacated and fiddling with the cuff of his new hoodie. It wasn't true black like his former one, more of a dark grey-black, but it had the advantages of being in one piece and not having been taken off of a dead tramp, and it fit him a little better. The blood red shirt underneath it was significantly oversized as the old one had been, but the new black jeans and utilitarian boots fit him perfectly. "It did say I was clever, 'just like him'," he said, dropping quotation marks around the phrase with his fingers, "but the rest was just nonsense babbling."

"Ah!" The Doctor held up a finger. "But there may have been method to his madness. Dalek Caan saw the whole of creation, all that had been and would be, and he used to speak in riddles of things to come. His nonsense might have meant more than you think."

"Pfft. Doubt it," the Master said dismissively. "That thing made _me_ look sane. Really, what's the point of saving an enemy from certain death and then dumping him off in the middle of nowhere?"

The Doctor tilted his head as he pondered the rhetorical question and shrugged one shoulder. "Well, Caan saved Davros from the Nightmare Child while at the same time arranging for him and all the Daleks to be destroyed by me instead. The logic behind his plans could be a bit circuitous at times." When there was no immediate reply to that, he glanced at the Master and noticed the other was giving him a rather alarmed look, and after a few seconds of thinking he figured out why. "Not that I think he's trying to have you destroyed," he said, holding his hands up. "By me or otherwise. He may have rescued you for a completely different reason. A non-lethal reason. I don't know what that might have been, given how much the Daleks loathed you, but it _is_ possible."

"You're not helping."

Sitting back and folding his hands again, the Doctor tapped the toe of his boot rapidly against the floor as he thought. "I suspect he did intend for you to be found by me though," he said finally. "Regardless of his long-term plans, I very much doubt he would have brought you out of the Time Lock just to have you starve to death on an abandoned moon, but who apart from me would ever have found you there? Elco Theta Four doesn't even appear in most databanks because it's so insignificant; it has absolutely nothing that might draw attention to it, and it's too far off the traveling routes for anyone to stumble across it by accident. Just the dead moon of a dead planet. The perfect place to hide something. Your signal was the only reason I came across you, and no ship but the TARDIS would have been able to pick it up, given how remote the Ralicon system is."

"Do you think that's all it was? There're certainly lots of other places that are even further out. I wondered if…" The Master's voice trailed off, and he started playing with his cuffs again as if he hadn't said anything. However, the Doctor wasn't about to let him get out of it that easily, and after a moment of the Doctor staring pointedly at him, eyebrows rising in encouraging increments until they disappeared completely under his mop of brown hair, the Master rolled his eyes and shrugged. "Well, I thought it might be… Well, you know. Theta." He sounded almost embarrassed to bring up the Doctor's childhood nickname, and almost as soon as he said it he quickly sat back with a scowl and shrugged again, saying "Never mind. It just seemed like an odd coincidence."

The Doctor mused on it silently for a moment. "I rather doubt Dalek Caan did anything by coincidence," he said finally, gazing at the Master with a peculiar expression. "It is possible there was some meaning behind it."

Noticing the look he was being given, the Master cocked his head with a slight puzzled frown. "What?" he asked curiously. When the Doctor didn't reply, he leaned forward in a mildly threatening manner and repeated "_What?_" in a harsher tone, trying to spur the Doctor into doing something other than sit there staring at him.

The Doctor simply gave a light dismissive shake of his head and waved away the question. "Nothing; just a silly little notion, but of course it wouldn't make sense." He clapped his hands against his legs, which made the Master flinch and growl, and then stood and walked over to the console. "I'm sure it was merely a convenient place to keep you safely stashed away until I found you. Perhaps he thought the name might help draw me to it if you weren't able to repair the signal tower, but I doubt it has any more significance than that."

"Really?" said the Master, less than convinced. The Doctor twisted around briefly to give him an affirming nod, and the other Time Lord raised his eyebrows briefly but sighed, reluctantly accepting that. He had been hoping to extract some sort of clue on the Dalek's motivations, particularly with the worrying revelation that it might have had potentially deadly plans in mind for him, and the moon's name likely being unimportant was rather disappointing, given that it was one of the very few things he had to work with. Still, he would have liked to know what the Doctor's 'notion' had been. Certainly he wasn't going to give the other the satisfaction of making him ask about it though - if the Doctor wanted to play coy, so be it; he wasn't going to take the bait.

"So, now," the Doctor said, spinning slowly back to the console and leaning over the controls, glancing back at the Master. "Where to first?"

The Master tilted his head and squinted at him, puzzled. "You're… letting me choose where to go?" he asked slowly, raising an eyebrow. This was an unexpected freedom, and a promising one.

The Doctor shrugged and waved a hand. "Partially. Nowhere with lots of people, for starters – I don't think either of us trust you well enough for that yet, and I wouldn't want there to be any _incidents_." The Master pursed his lips in mild aggravation but gave a brief sideways nod of acceptance; he wasn't particularly eager to be surrounded by people yet anyway, not after being in solitude for so long, and he knew that his mind was still far from stable, despite his present approximation of sanity. For now he was completely dependent on the Doctor's good opinion, and he didn't want to risk the Doctor abandoning him for ripping some idiot human apart in a fit of temper. Ironic though it was, until he got his own mind sorted out and found some way to restore his mental barriers, the safest place for him to be was with the Doctor. "Apart from that…" The Doctor flicked a switch and smiled happily as the TARDIS hummed into life, the pre-flight lights flashing on, and Amy came over to watch curiously as he ran his fingers expertly over the controls. "Wherever you want. Anywhere and anywhen in the universe."

The Master leant back against the railing and gazed up at the vaulted ceiling, his fingers idly tapping out the familiar four-beat rhythm against his leg even though the sound was gone from his head. "Anywhere that isn't all dust and rocks and metal," he said finally. "And _not_ Earth – I've had enough of that blasted place for five lifetimes. Wretched little backwater planet; I don't know what the appeal is for you."

"_Don't _you call my planet a backwater," Amy said with a scowl at the Master, a bit of her usual fire coming back as she became more accustomed to the new alien's presence, and the Master rolled his eyes and made a chatterbox gesture with his hand.

"Ugh, how _do _you manage to find them, Doctor?" he said. "This one's actually worse than the others. I didn't think it was possible. On second thought, we could spin by a black hole and drop her off. Bad luck for whatever's on the other side of it, of course, but at least we'd be rid of her."

Amy clenched her jaw and took a few angry steps toward the Master, whose grin widened as she approached, but the Doctor shook a scolding finger at them both and said "Now, now, play nicely, both of you; I don't want to have to give you time outs, but the TARDIS does have a few rooms ideally suited to it should it be necessary. Now, place. Baxiliar Four, how's that sound? Middle of the 39th century, no one around - technically it hasn't even been discovered yet – and lots of warm beaches, sunny skies, and these fascinating little plants that grow flowers made of crystals. They make wonderful knickknacks, always good to have on hand in case of forgotten birthdays or surprise weddings where one needs a useless gift. What do you think, Amy: sound good?"

His companion nodded happily and ran off to fetch Rory, delighted to finally be going someplace warm and already planning her outfit, and the Master simply shook his head in mild derision and muttered "Crystal flowers," making no other complaint. As he did so, the screen on the bench below the platform caught his eye, and the Time Lord stood and hopped down the steps to fetch it, carrying it back up to the main platform with him. The Master settled back into his chair with the television in his lap and started wiping the dust off the screen with his sleeve, and the Doctor casually leaned against the railing beside him.

"Why _did_ you bring that with you?" the Doctor asked, gesturing at the television before folding his arms comfortably. "We could easily have found you a better one. That works."

The Master shrugged and replied "It'll work once it gets a power cell in it, and it would have been a shame to leave it behind after I spent so much time on the thing. Besides…" He grinned and steepled his fingers over the little screen in the classic evil genius pose. "It's going to drive you mad trying to find secret compartments and sinister hidden functions in it, because you'll never be convinced that there aren't any. How did your stealthy little scan turn out?" At the Doctor's surprised look of chagrin at being caught out, the Master laughed and clapped his hands victoriously. "Gotcha! You sly devil," he said with heavily exaggerated indignation. "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist having a go at it. You are rather fun to torture, Doctor – you make it so very easy."

"Don't think your mockery can dissuade me from checking that television over," the Doctor said sternly, straightening up and smoothing out the creases in his jacket before pointing at the other Time Lord, who gazed innocently up at him. "I'm not going to be convinced that it's harmless until I've seen every micron of it. I know you."

"Good; at least one of us does," the Master mumbled. "And don't think I – ah, and here come your little friends." He turned away from the approaching humans as they appeared on the gallery overlooking the control platform, focusing his full attention back on the screen and appearing supremely disinterested in his traveling companions. As the couple hurried down the stairs to the platform, Amy now in dry clothes and Rory still slightly soggy, the Doctor returned to the console and danced around it pressing buttons and priming systems and, with one final excited grin at the others, flipped up the final lever.

The TARDIS rumbled into its takeoff sequence, the familiar whirring filling the room as the ship shuddered and jolted its way into the time vortex. Struggling to stay on their feet, the Doctor grabbed the bar below the monitor and Rory gripped the edge of the console with one hand while holding Amy with the other arm as she whooped with excitement, and the Master managed to throw himself across the chair and cling to it, not even trying to stand on the tossing ship. "You _really_ should have retaken basic flight training!" he yelled at the Doctor over the racket. The Doctor beamed widely and gave him an enthusiastic double thumbs-up sign before losing his footing and crashing sidelong into a laughing Amy, who grabbed him by his tweed jacket and hauled him upright again.

Outside, the dust whirled around in the kickback from the TARDIS's takeoff and slowly settled into the square imprint the blue box had left behind in the dirt. The sound of the engines whirred away into nothingness, and silence descended once again on Elco Theta Four as if it had never been broken.

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**A/N: And that's the end of this section of the story! ^^ The next few chapters will probably be single-chapter episodes rather than multi-chapter arcs like this one was, though there are a couple more of those in the works as well. One of those might be put up as a separate fic once it's further along, as it's not really part of this overall storyline, but it will still be fully set in this story's canon. :)**


	5. Turbulence

**A/N: Now we finally get to see Rory's thoughts on having the Master around, and Amy and the Master get to know each other a little better. Or worse. X3**

**First, my wonderful reviewers! :D**

**Raven Aorla** – The capitalization in the prologue has been fixed now. :) Thanks!

**Mabudachi-trio - **^_^ The Master has a very low opinion of the Doctor's (lack of) driving skills. XD

**Grumpr –** Thanks! ^^ He's convinced there must be _something _hidden away in there, and the Master finds his paranoia very entertaining. As for Master vs. Amy… Amy might not be the one we have to worry for. o.O

**GuesssWho –** They are sometimes a bit more similar than the Doctor realizes, aren't they. ;)

**LeonaWriter –** Thank you! :) It's certainly a shock to his system – he's used to being so unassailable mentally, and now he's got no defences. :( At least he still has most of the old indomitable will intact, even more so now that he's getting his strength back.

**JimandSteve –** Aww, thank you so much! ^_^ There are some awesome Master fanfics around, so definitely check in to some of the others as well. :3

**Aietradaea –** Thanks! :) I'm glad that the balance seems good, especially since most of the events so far have been on the darker side. ^^

**don't-call-me-koschei – **Hee, thanks! :D I always have fun playing around with this group. ^^

**Kesomon, The Master Of All Matter, claudia's sparrow –** Thank you! ^_^ I'm so glad you're enjoying it! :D

**Disclaimer: **_**Doctor Who **_**and all related content and characters belong to the BBC; no infringement is intended.**

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**It wasn't quite certain afterwards exactly what the argument had been about initially or what had set it off. The Doctor had run upstairs in search of some new gadget he wanted to integrate into the TARDIS, leaving Amy and the Master in the main room where they were studiously ignoring each other, which in retrospect might have been a warning sign. By the time Rory heard the yelling and ran to investigate, the two were standing inches apart and looked seconds away from a messy detonation. The Master was smirking and leaning back against the console, his lightly-bandaged hands carefully placed well away from any of the controls, while Amy stood with her hands on her hips before him, glaring and shouting at him with all the volume she could muster, which was not insignificant. "Uh, Amy?" Rory said, waving one hand nervously in an attempt to catch her attention but not her redirected wrath. "Amy, what's up?"

His wife growled, still staring fiercely at the unconcerned Time Lord. "What's up? I'll tell you what's up. This little twit thinks he can just insult us all as much as he likes because, ooooh, he's a great clever alien and we're just silly apes with mush for brains."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," the Master said smoothly with no apparent annoyance at Amy's derision, shifting his weight comfortably with a quick glance at the console behind him. He'd learned from painful experience that the TARDIS had strong objections to him even accidentally brushing her controls and, while he seemed to take perverse pleasure in testing the limits of the ship's patience, he knew that pushing her too far would result in a nasty zap to whichever parts of him were closest to the console. "Apart from the 'little twit' part – I think of myself more as a bastard."

"Nope," said Amy firmly, jabbing a finger at him, "you're a twit. An obnoxious little self-absorbed over-bearing bleach-headed twit."

"Oh, yes, go for the hair," the Master said with a roll of his eyes. "Brilliant move, that is, though that probably counts as a witty comeback for you. Now be a good little ginger snap and jump back in your biscuit tin."

Rory held his hands up in supplication as Amy began to swell up with rage. "Okay, how about we all just take a moment to cool down? You know, take some deep breaths, count to –" He was interrupted by a furious stream of imprecations and insults as Amy verbally unleashed her anger on the Master, and the nurse covered his face with one hand in frustration. "Why does nobody ever listen to me?" he grumbled to himself, trying to ignore the flood of invective sweeping past him.

The Master snickered at Amy's ire and crossed his arms casually across his chest in the very picture of indifference as her diatribe continued, but Rory could see a certain hardness in the Time Lord's eyes and a sharpness to his smile that made him feel increasingly nervous about the alien. Even in the little time they had spent with the Master since picking him up a few days earlier, Rory had seen that the man's mood could flip from amused to vicious in an instant, usually with no stops or warnings in between. The way he was looking so fixedly at Amy now was setting off warning bells in Rory's mind, and the human stepped forward quickly and gently drew his wife back a few steps with one arm across her middle.

The Master tilted his head in his odd unhuman way, a hint of his creepy grin flickering across his face, and Rory had to suppress a shudder. More than almost anything else, it was that grin that had convinced Rory that the Master was truly a psychopath – in his rotations in the psych wards at the hospital he had seen the same unfeeling smirk and cold glittering eyes in one of the psychiatric patients, the one they were always warned not to let near forks or pencils, and the memory of that chilling expression had stuck with him over the years. "Ah, the brave Rory makes his move," the Time Lord said mockingly, pushing himself fully upright off of the console. "Ever running around, trying to rescue his lady from her own reckless stupidity. That must be a full-time job and a half."

Amy pushed Rory's arm away and stepped up to stand directly in front of the Master with a furious scowl. "I don't need anyone to come around saving me, and don't think for even a _second_ that you scare me. You're _nothing_, just a pathetic nothing who tries to bring people down so you can feel better about yourself." She planted her open hand on the Time Lord's chest and shoved him, not hard, but enough that he had to take a quick half-step back to catch his balance, and glared into his eyes. "You aren't even worth getting mad at."

The Master closed his eyes and chuckled, shaking his head briefly before glancing up at Amy with a slight smile. "Really?" His face abruptly twisted into an ugly scowl and, before either Rory or Amy could react, the alien whipped his hand around and struck Amy with full force across the face, knocking her to the glass floor of the console platform. "How about now?" he snarled with his teeth bared, spreading his arms out challengingly as he stood over Amy, who sat on the floor with one hand to her cheek and an utterly shocked expression. "What, not so full of fire now, Amy Pond? Funny; a second ago you were spitting poison quite freely and declaring how unafraid you were. Did you think I wouldn't hit a girl or something? Let's see how eager you are to try it on now that we've got _that_ misconception cleared up!" Rory clenched his jaw and strode toward the alien, who laughed and clapped his hands sardonically as he approached. "Oh, good job, Rory! Yes, come and avenge the little woman – who says chivalry is dead?"

Rory stopped a step away from the Master and drew in a slow breath, trying to resist the powerful urge to punch the man. "Right, then. I'm only going to say this once, and the only reason I'm giving you a chance at all is because I know that you're sick and can't help what you do sometimes." The Master rolled his eyes and gave the nurse a disdainful look, leaning back against the console again with boredom, but Rory grit his teeth and persevered despite the Time Lord's silent derision. "The Doctor wants to help you, and this is his ship, so I'll accept that. But if you _ever_ try to hurt Amy again, I swear I'll knock your head in and tell the Doctor it was an accident."

The Master snorted. "Well, look at you, trying to be all hard and tough. It puts me in mind of something, actually. Hmm." He tilted his head and rested his chin on one hand, tapping his fingers on his chin and peering at Rory with mild interest before raising one finger as if he'd figured something out. "You know what it's like? It's a little like being threatened by a scared rabbit. Frankly I don't know whether you're about to hit me or wet yourself."

Rory opened his mouth to reply with affront to the comparison, but before he could speak there was a roar of fury as Amy launched herself bodily at the Master from the floor, catching the surprised Time Lord around the waist and throwing him down with a heavy thud as they both hit the glass platform floor, Amy pinning the Master underneath her. Still yelling, though with no discernible words, Amy straddled the prone alien and started pounding him with her fists, the Master flailing his arms awkwardly in an attempt to shield himself from her assault. Horrified, Rory leapt forward to grab Amy and tried to haul her off of the Master, but Amy bunched up a fistful of the Master's hoodie with one hand to get a better grip on him, still clouting him with the other. The alien twisted around in his loose jacket and scrabbled at the glass panels in an attempt to free himself, but he quickly realized the futility of the exercise and instead curled up in a ball with his arms wrapped over his head as she landed another particularly strong slap.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" The Doctor's astonished voice rang out as he appeared at the top of the stairs, and he dropped the pile of assorted wires and circuitry he'd been carrying to dash down the steps toward the brawl. "Amy! Master! What on Earth…" The brown-haired Time Lord dove between the two and helped Rory peel Amy away from the Master, the woman managing to get in one last hit on the blond man before she was pulled out of range by her husband. After a quick glance at Amy to see that she was both uninjured and firmly in Rory's grip, the Doctor crouched next to the Master and helped him sit up, getting his hands swatted at irritably for his trouble. "Now, what did you do to set _that_ off?" the Doctor said to the Master sternly.

"Why do you just automatically assume it was my fault?" the Master said with a baffled expression, but he couldn't stop a pleased grin from sneaking through as he spoke. He then winced and brought a hand to his mouth, poking gingerly at a cut on his lip where Amy had landed one blow, and then rubbed a finger lightly over a bleeding scrape on his cheekbone and chuckled. "She scratched me, the minx! Look at that; I'm bleeding and everything."

"Well, you deserved it," Amy said unsympathetically, "and I'll give you worse than that if you even _think _about pulling something like that again. Y'understand me?"

The Doctor glanced over at her with his brow furrowed as he and the Master rose to their feet, the Master grimacing slightly and rubbing his elbow where he'd struck it against the console on his way down. "What was it that he pulled?" the brown-haired Time Lord asked with slightly worried curiosity, peering up and down at Amy.

Rory leaned around from behind Amy, still keeping a firm hold on her arms in case she tried to launch a new attack. "He slapped her," he said, nodding his head accusingly toward the other Time Lord. "The Master slapped Amy."

The Master huffed a short incredulous laugh as the Doctor gave him a reproachful look, and spread his hands out in disbelief. "She's _annoying_," he said, his tone clearly indicating that in his books that was more than justification enough for a slap or two. "And she completely over-reacted."

"Oh, I'll show you what an over-reaction would have been," Amy growled, struggling briefly against Rory's hold before turning her glare on her husband instead. Rory quailed slightly but didn't release her, and Amy slouched back and crossed her arms in a huff, glowering at the Master, who grinned brightly at her in between dabs at his mouth with his sleeve.

"That's _enough_, both of you," the Doctor said firmly, the authority in his voice seeming out of place coming from so young a man, especially one with floppy hair and a bow tie. Amy looked somewhat penitent, but the Master simply rolled his eyes sarcastically and turned away from the Doctor to head toward the stairs. Before he could get more than a step away though, the Doctor took hold of his arm and sternly drew the shorter man around to face him again. "Just a minute. I'm not done talking," he said quietly, which made the Master snort lightly, but Rory noticed that the Master kept glancing away from the Doctor's steady gaze, not quite meeting the other Time Lord's eyes. "Now, I know you and Amy don't get along, but there's to be no more of this deliberate provoking. That goes for both of you," he added, giving Amy a serious look as well before returning his focus to the Master, who appeared to be pretending the Doctor wasn't there and was instead gazing with interest at a blank spot on the far wall. "I understand this situation is difficult for you to cope with, but if you need to take your frustration out on someone, you do it with me, not them. Is that quite understood?"

The blond Time Lord had his head turned away and was apparently ignoring the other's calm voice, but the Doctor stood patiently waiting for a response, and finally the Master sniffed with a slight curl of his lip, his gaze still averted. It didn't look much like acquiescence to Rory, but the Doctor smiled broadly and gave the other a friendly pat on the shoulder before releasing his arm and spinning around cheerfully to face Rory and Amy. "Right! Now that's sorted, I've got to start working on this tesseractal distortion inhibitor – it should even out some of the turbulence while we're traveling. Come along, Pond; I need to get those resistors organized again, and I think some of them rolled under the stairs…"

The Doctor trotted back to the heap of wires he had dropped on the steps and, after a moment of hesitation, Rory let go of Amy so she could follow him. His wife gave him an only halfway joking scowl as she pulled away from him, and she turned a full glare on the Master as she walked by him on her way to the stairs. The Master paid no attention to her, instead resting his elbows against the console behind him and shooting a sulky dark look at the Doctor's back. He did seem far more subdued now though, which surprised Rory – he really hadn't expected the Doctor's mild scolding to have any effect on the irascible Time Lord, but it seemed that his words had actually had an impact on the Master. Slouched back in his over-sized hoodie and jeans with his hands tucked sullenly in his pockets, he looked like a child who knew he'd earned a parental lecture but still resented having received one.

Rory still wasn't entirely sure what the situation was with the Master. The Doctor had, in his typical careless manner, neglected to fill his companions in on who the Master was beyond what little they had already worked out on their own, and he never discussed what exactly was wrong with the man. It was obviously fairly severe, whatever it was, and Rory doubted it was something he'd find in any manual. It was difficult to feel sympathy for the Master, who was deliberately aggravating even in his good moments and almost intolerable in his bad ones, but somehow Rory couldn't quite bring himself to hate the alien, though the Time Lord's spiteful behaviour toward Amy had brought him close to it on several occasions. From what Rory had seen, the Master must have gone through some terrible experiences in his life, and he had spotted the Time Lord a couple of times sitting quietly on his own with a pitiably lost and afraid look on his face. For all the Master's obnoxious conduct and confident air of superiority, he seemed like someone whose faith in others had been shattered beyond recovery, and Rory couldn't help feeling a small amount of compassion toward him for that.

The Master did appear to hold some amount of trust in the Doctor though. From the way the two spoke they clearly knew each other well, and they had an annoying habit of chatting about events, people and places that neither Rory nor Amy had ever heard of. He had spotted Amy glowering at the Master even more than usual during those chats, but both aliens always seemed too caught up in their conversation to notice her, and any attempt to interrupt or get a word in edgewise from either human would earn irritated looks and long-suffering sighs from both Time Lords. Rory had a nagging worry that the Doctor might one day decide he had a two-companion surplus and drop them off on the side of the road like unwanted puppies; he'd have been less concerned if he could be more certain that the Doctor would remember to leave them on the right planet.

As he was musing on how difficult it might be to catch a ride back to Earth if they did end up stranded on some alien world, Rory realized that he was still gazing at the Master, who had turned and was now watching him with narrowed eyes. Rory started with slight alarm and quickly looked away to focus on Amy and the Doctor as they crouched on the floor gathering up stray bits of circuitry, knowing even as he did so that the Master had noticed his scrutiny and taken some umbrage to it. Given that the Doctor had just told the Master off in front of both him and Amy, the blond Time Lord was probably in a foul mood already, and with his paranoid tendencies he would undoubtedly put the worst spin on Rory's look and take it as an implied challenge at best and a direct insult at worst.

Out of the corner of his eye Rory could see the Master smirking at him with a certain glint in his eyes, and he silently cursed himself for letting his attention drift off. Shuffling awkwardly toward the others in an attempt to put more distance between himself and the Time Lord, Rory chanced a quick glance back and saw the Master grin wickedly and snap his teeth at him, and the unnerved human gulped and picked up his pace, almost scurrying to the Doctor's side. "Anything I can help with?" he asked, still feeling the Master's eyes on the back of his neck.

"No, I think we've got this, Rory, and I wouldn't want you to drop anything important," the Doctor said without looking up.

"You just dropped everything all over the stairs," Rory pointed out flatly.

The Doctor held up an oddly-shaped piece of metal with a glass bulb set in the centre and examined it in the light curiously, finally making a satisfied sound and tossing it on to the growing pile of odds and ends in Amy's arms. "Yes, but _I_ know how to drop things _carefully_." He stood and clapped his hands cheerfully before spinning around and bounding back to the console. "Right, then!" he said. "Now to get this inhibitor set up. I've never actually tried making one of these before - I can't wait to see if it works. Oh, come on, Pond, hurry up!"

As Amy made her way carefully to the console, struggling to keep a grip on the large collection of objects the Doctor had handed to her, Rory followed close behind her and kept a wary eye on the Master. Seeing Rory's concern, the Master chuckled softly and left the console, wandering away to lounge across one of the yellow chairs instead. After a moment of swinging the chair from side to side across its short range of motion, the blond Time Lord pulled a book out of his hoodie pocket and began reading, appearing perfectly calm and uninterested in the humans. Rory eyed him dubiously. He rather suspected now that the Master's show of hostility to him had been mostly feigned, done to prove that his deference to the Doctor did not extend to potentially uppity humans, and that the alien wasn't intending to actually follow up on the implied threat. Still, it wasn't a theory that Rory was willing to test any time soon. There was ample evidence that the Master had no objection to using violence whenever he felt like it, and Rory certainly wasn't going to put much faith in the Doctor's reprimand sticking.

It seemed he would just have to watch his step – he wouldn't want Amy to have to explain to his parents that he'd been mauled and eaten by a peeved alien Time Lord. Then again, he had already told them how he spent almost two thousand years as a plastic centurion, so it might not come off as particularly unusual any more. _Why couldn't I just have _normal_ problems for once? _he thought dolefully. Watching the Doctor and Amy digging through the pile of components in their construction of a contraption that looked like a corkscrew made by Escher, Rory sighed and shook his head, thinking wistfully of peaceful cottages in sweet little villages where everything was quiet and tranquil with nary a deadly alien to be seen.


	6. Bread and Circuses Part 1

**Yay, finals are done! ^^ Now, back to the story; this bit is a two-parter, and the second half shouldn't take anywhere near as long to be posted as the first one did.**

**Thank you so much to all my lovely reviewers, both new and old – it's so great to see that people are enjoying the story! :D**

**Kesomon** – It would be interesting to see how River might react to the Master, and what he'd think of her - personally, I wouldn't be surprised if the Master taught her how to fly the TARDIS in exchange for a bit of blackmail fodder against the Doctor. ;) Also, with the deadly combination of Amy, River and the Master, the bow tie would definitely meet its end.

**, Brownbug and Mabudachi-trio** – Glad you enjoyed it! ^_^ The Master definitely underestimated the risks of angering Amy.

**GuesssWho** – I can just see him starting off with, "Well, it all started about 900 years ago…"

**Grumpr** – Eleven doesn't take too well to people interrupting him when he's talking, does he? ^^ The Master does like to push people's buttons, and sometimes he pushes the one marked 'Hit the Master very hard' just to see what will happen. XD

**LeonaWriter** – Yes, poor Rory – he's able to pick up on things, but then he has no clue what to do about them and just worries instead.

**The Doctor is Theta Sigma** – Thanks! ^_^ I'm glad it did, too. :)

**Raven-Dragonlady84** – He left it in a box marked 'sense of fun'. /Turlough XD Thank you! ^^ Yes, Simm's Master is more of the unpredictably psychotic type than the earlier incarnations were; when he gets hammy, he's usually about to kill someone.

**Aietradaea** – It does seem that he tends to turn nasty right when he seems the most calm and composed, doesn't it? o.O Thanks! ^_^ I like Rory, too – I didn't care for him much at first, but he definitely grew on me, and now he's one of my favourites. :)

**Misskiramel** – Rory's really just in over his head for the most part – all he wants is a nice quiet village to settle down in, and instead he gets carnivorous aliens and being erased from Time, poor boy. XD Aww, thank you so much! ^_^ I think the complex universe is what really got me interested in writing Doctor Who fanfics, because there are just so many possibilities to play around with. That and the Master. ;)

**Disclaimer: **_**Doctor Who **_**and all related content and characters belong to the BBC; no infringement is intended.**

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"Doctor, the TARDIS can travel to the recent past, right?" Amy asked one day, leaning across the console while the Doctor played around with the stabilizer switches. "I mean, it doesn't have to be all ancient Rome and dinosaurs – we could go to something just a few decades back, too, yeah?"

The Doctor glanced up suspiciously. "Yeee-es, we could. Why do you ask? You aren't planning to go save any relatives from dying, are you? I've had bad experiences with that one."

"No, no, nothing like that," Amy assured him quickly. "Just Rory and I were talking about things we'd like to see, and he mentioned this rock concert in 1977 that he's always wished he could have gone to, so... what d'you think? Could we do it? It could be sort of like a honeymoon trip."

"_Another_ one?" The Doctor scratched the back of his neck and thought about it. "Well… I suppose we could probably manage it. It might take a _little_ careful maneuvering to keep from running into myself, considering how much time I spent there, but it might be fun to take a trip back. Hmm," he sighed with a nostalgic smile. "I always liked the seventies. Such an engaging time – I've many fond memories of it. Do you remember the seventies?" he called over to the Master, who was sprawled across one of the yellow pilot chairs with his small makeshift television on his lap.

"I remember the particularly idiotic humans and some of your more appalling fashion choices," the other Time Lord replied in a bored tone, not looking away from the screen. Since the Doctor had finally consented to putting a power cell in the device – which the Doctor had insisted on installing himself, followed by running a full barrage of fruitless diagnostic tests on the device, to the Master's endless amusement - the Master had spent most of the past day fiddling with it and sifting through the wide range of television signals the TARDIS could pick up through time and space. After much muttered griping about 'bloody reality TV rubbish', he had finally succeeded in tuning it to a show he deemed watchable, though no one had inquired as to what show that was. "Not quite as revolting as your outfits in the eighties, mind you, but really that scarf was ridiculous."

"I liked that scarf," the Doctor said back, rather defensively. "It was different, unique, eye-catching."

The Master snorted. "It was _certainly_ that." He raised his eyes briefly from the television programme to give the Doctor a scouring look and huffed with spiteful amusement. "You'd fit right in with that costume you wear now – that bow tie and braces combo makes you look like a seventies reject who got thrown out of university but still makes everyone call him 'Professor'. Oh, wait, I forgot. That actually describes you perfectly. Never mind, then."

The Doctor narrowed his eyes frostily at the other and shifted back and forth, and as he turned back to the controls Amy heard him mutter, "I wasn't thrown out, and bow ties are _cool_," which she rolled her eyes at. There were very few things that she and the Master could agree on, but one of those things was their mutual frustration at the Doctor's love of bow ties. Of course, the Master, a man who seemed glued to his black hoodie and jeans, really wasn't one to talk about other people's fashion sense, not that it ever stopped him. "_Anyway_, what concert was this, then?"

"We can go?" Amy asked excitedly, grabbing his arm. The Doctor smiled and nodded in affirmation, and Amy squealed and shouted, "Rory! Get over here; I've got a surprise for you!" The Master flinched at the yelling and hunched over his television with a growl, pointedly shielding his nearest ear with one hand, which only made her call all the louder, "_Rooooo-_ry!"

Amy's husband poked his head out of the hallway off one of the stairways, looking puzzled and a little concerned. "What surprise? Are we going somewhere?"

"Oh, get down here, you idiot," Amy replied with a grin, waving him down with a broad sweep of her arm. Rory cast a worried look in the Master's direction and, despite not appearing to have taken his eyes off the screen, the Master smirked slightly as if he knew how anxious he made the human. While the Time Lord had been keeping an almost respectful distance from Amy since their altercation a week earlier, he clearly considered Rory to still be fair game for all manner of oblique threats and general unveiled contempt. Rory only hesitated for a few seconds though, and he quickly trotted down the stairs and over to Amy's side once he saw that the Master wasn't intending to leave his seat. Amy snuck one arm around his waist and drew him closer, kissing him lightly on the nose. "Now, where and when was that concert of yours?"

As Rory delightedly told the Doctor all the necessary details of the concert, along with several unnecessary ones, Amy watched the Master narrowly. She didn't know what he was watching on the telly – and very much preferred not to know, given what he was like – but it seemed to have his full attention and had kept him occupied and relatively quiet for the past half hour, which was always a good thing. The jabs at the Doctor's clothing were the only insults he'd dished out over that half hour, and he hadn't even snapped his teeth at Rory as he'd taken to doing lately, being too focused on the television. Still, it was disturbing to see him enjoying anything that much. He was smiling, actually _smiling_, and every now and again he would chuckle at whatever was on the screen. _It's probably clips of people killing kittens with flamethrowers_, Amy thought. _Or worse_.

Her musings on what sort of depravities the Master might be watching were cut short by the Doctor budging by her on his way around the central console, flicking switches and spinning dials as he went. "Right!" he said, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. "Off we go; Stafford awaits us. Master, you'd best put your television away before we head off."

The Master irritably held up a finger to shush him. "Hush, almost done; there's no need to be all impatient about it. If you'd actually learn how to fly the TARDIS, we wouldn't have to worry about things getting shaken to pieces every time you try to land somewhere. Do you even _know_ how to take the parking brake off or are you just too lazy to bother? It's a wonder this pile of junk still flies."

The Doctor tutted. "The TARDIS is _not_ a pile of junk. And you wonder why she won't let you touch her controls." The Master ignored him in favour of watching the show, and Amy couldn't help but edge in his direction in perverse hope of catching sight of the screen. The volume on the television was turned down to almost nothing, but to Amy's surprise she was certain she heard the sound of a laughing baby emanating from it. Unable to restrain her curiosity any further, she darted forward and leant over the Master's shoulder to see. He bared his teeth in annoyance at her closeness, but she didn't even notice, too busy staring in shock at what was on the screen.

For several seconds Amy was unable to marshal her thoughts enough to speak, but she finally managed to pull it together enough to say one word: "_Teletubbies?_" The Master raised an eyebrow at her and edged a little further away but made no comment. "You're watching the Teletubbies. Seriously. The Teletubbies."

The Master sighed with aggravation. "You seem to be having even more trouble with basic comprehension than usual, Amelia Pond. There's no reason to repeat yourself."

"But that's a kiddie show. Not even that, it's a _baby _show. What are you watching it for?"

"Why shouldn't I?" the Master replied mildly, watching as the last Teletubby waved bye-bye and the babbling baby-faced sun sank behind fake grassy hills. "Hmm. I'm always amazed by some of the things humans come up with. Nowhere else in the universe would you find baby aliens with televisions in their stomachs as a source of entertainment. I don't know if it's brilliance or insanity, though considering this is humans we're talking about it's almost certainly the latter."

Amy shook her head as the Master switched off the screen. "You know, it's actually more disturbing, you watching that, than anything else I'd thought it might have been." The alien ignored her and tucked the screen into his hoodie's front pocket – by all rights it shouldn't have been able to fit but, as with the Doctor's pockets, the Master seemed to have an endless supply of space within the pocket for anything he chose to put in it. Amy sometimes wondered if a person would be able fit in one of the Time Lords' pockets, and what they would find in there if they did.

"Right then," the Doctor said, rubbing his hands together. "Everyone set, seatbelts fastened, trays in their upright position?" Rory hurried to a nearby seat and Amy took firm hold of the console, her eyes shining with anticipation, while the Master grumbled and put his hand on the railing. "Off we go then!" The TARDIS lurched as the engines kicked in and launched it into the vortex like a spinning top, albeit a rather rectangular one, and the blue box barrelled onward for Earth.

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With the usual strained whirring of its engines, the TARDIS slowly materialized in a somewhat grungy side alleyway between a large rubbish bin and a stack of decaying newspapers. The door creaked open and the Doctor poked his head out, sniffing the air, and then he experimentally tapped one foot a few times against the pavement. "Yes, this definitely feels like the seventies," he declared happily, throwing the doors fully open and striding out with Rory and Amy close behind him. "A perfect landing, wouldn't you say?"

"Not particularly - it felt about as rough as usual," Amy admitted, and the Doctor deflated a little. "Still, if we're actually in the right town in the right year, you're already doing better than usual, so A-plus for that at least."

"You wound me, Pond," the Doctor said gravely, bringing his hand to his chest. "I'll have you know that I'm very good at getting the right location, which is no mean feat when you have to assign coordinates over five dimensions, one of which is constantly changing itself around. Now…" He paused and looked around, and then stuck his head back into the TARDIS. "Now where's the Master gone to?"

Rory raised his hand uncertainly and said, "I saw him heading upstairs when we landed. You… don't think he's up to anything, do you? Maybe we should stay in the TARDIS, just in case – I wouldn't want to get stuck in the seventies permanently."

"Well, it would only be the seventies until it became the eighties," the Doctor said distractedly, peering around the door and leaning this way and that to see up the stairways inside. "And it really is quite an enjoyable decade – ah!" He swept one hand up to point out the Master as the other Time Lord appeared at the top of the stairs and strolled toward them. "There he is. You see? No need to worry at all."

The Master joined them at the door with all the enthusiasm of a cat about to get a bath, and Amy gaped at him. "Your clothes! You've changed them!" she said in astonishment, staring at him up and down. He was still wearing his regular black jeans and work boots, but the baggy hoodie and red T-shirt had been replaced by a button-down shirt and black leather jacket and, while Amy would prefer death to admitting it to the Time Lord, it suited him. His appearance was still of a rougher sort with his scruffy blond hair and perpetual stubble, and he looked even scrawnier than usual without the hoodie on, but at least he no longer looked like the creepy guy one might see rummaging in dustbins behind the bus depot. There was still the strange sense of otherness to him, the feeling he was somehow more than he appeared, but the Doctor had that, too – it seemed to be a Time Lord thing, no matter how they were dressed.

The Master rolled his eyes and huffed with mild annoyance at her. "Yes, because unlike the Doctor I don't care for standing out like a sore thumb everywhere we go. He obviously isn't concerned about it but, for some _strange_ reason, people tend not to take a man seriously when he's wearing a vegetable."

"Oh, I don't know; I rather liked the celery," the Doctor said, although his expression suggested he wasn't entirely convinced himself. "It was perhaps a little… _too_ unique though, and it left dreadful stains on my jacket. The jacket's still in my wardrobe, actually – I keep meaning to wash it and never seem to get around to it. Anyway, moving on…" He swung his arms out to encompass the alley before them. "1977 Stafford! We're a few hours early for the concert, but that's all right - it'll give us some time to sightsee."

"Sightsee? In Stafford?" said the Master sarcastically.

"And what's so bad about Stafford?" Rory asked defensively. "It's a lovely old place, and some of the historic buildings here are amazing."

The Master gave a derisive sniff. "Great. Old buildings. How exciting."

Amy raised an eyebrow and said to the Doctor, "Knowing how things are around you, we won't get any sightseeing in anyway. The minute we start looking about the place, we'll end up finding some alien invasion and spend the whole time running around after things. That's what always happens, everywhere we go – it's like trouble just waits for you to show up." As if on cue, from the end of the alley there was a metallic crash followed by the sound of a woman screaming, and Amy threw her hands up in resignation. "And off we go again."

The Doctor and the two humans took off running for the sound, the Master sauntering after them with his hands in his pockets, and they turned the corner where the alley joined a narrow backstreet to see a middle-aged woman sitting on the ground, an overturned rubbish bin at her feet. She waved frantically at the group when she saw them and screamed, "Help! Catch him!"

Rory ran forward to help the woman to her feet, swiftly checking her over for injuries, and the Doctor whipped out his sonic screwdriver and started scanning her. "Who was it?" he asked quickly. "What did he look like; is he human?"

"Of course he's bloody human!" the woman screeched. "And while you're standing here gawping and waving your little glowy thing, he's getting off with my bag!"

"Your… bag," the Doctor said, confused. "Why would somebody want a bag? Is it an unusual bag? You didn't get it from one of those odd little shops that appear overnight and then are gone the next day, did you? Interdimensional shops like those are always a problem - ouch!"

Amy shook her hand out, trying to ease the stinging from where she had slapped the Doctor on the arm, and said, "It's probably just a normal handbag, Doctor, the kind that women carry about all the time, and the kind that thieves like to snatch so they can get money out of them. That's why they're called _bag-snatchers_. And I'm sure this lady would appreciate getting said bag _back_." She gave the Doctor a significant look, and he switched off his screwdriver and stood awkwardly looking from her to the increasingly exasperated woman, tossing the screwdriver from hand to hand.

"Yes… right. Of course. Ah… Master," he said, spinning on his heel and pointing with his screwdriver at the other Time Lord, who eyed him warily. "Would you go get this nice lady's bag back for her, please?"

The Master stared at him for a moment, incredulous, and then sighed and rubbed his hand over his eyes. "You want me to go fetch a woman's purse," he said flatly, too taken aback by the Doctor even asking such a thing of him to bother getting indignant about it.

"Yes, if you don't mind. Oh, and maybe… yes, I want you to bring the thief back here as well." At the mention of capturing the thief, the Master's eyes lit up with interest and he cocked his head with a slight grin of anticipation. Seeing the other Time Lord's abrupt change in demeanour, the Doctor leaned closer to the Master and lowered his voice as he added, "Alive and _in one piece_."

"Aw, you're no fun, Doctor," the other replied with a teasing smirk, not looking at all disheartened. "I was looking forward to an early lunch." The Doctor gave him a stern 'that had better have been a joke' look, and the Master chuckled and shook his head slightly. Stepping a few paces back, the Master looked up and down the street, which was deserted apart from them, and sniffed the air intently. A slow grin spread across his face as he picked up the scent of the fled thief, the smell reeking of old sweat, cigarettes and cheap alcohol, and he glanced at the others with a predatory gleam in his eye. "Won't be a moment," he said, and with that he was off at a dead run in the thief's direction, disappearing around the corner in seconds.

"Wow. He's _fast_," Amy said, impressed in spite of herself. She had never noticed the Master being particularly active, as he seemed to spend most of his time either slouching around the TARDIS or sleeping, but there was always a feline smoothness to his movement that suggested he was more athletic than one might guess. Somehow she'd never quite equated that to _fast_ though. Of course, the Doctor was also fast, but he did it with a lot less grace and a lot more wild swinging of the knees. She wasn't entirely sure whether she was relieved or disappointed to discover that the gawky run was a personal trait of the Doctor's rather than one common to Time Lords in general.

Rory gazed after the departed Time Lord with a concerned frown. "Are you sure he's all right to be off on his own like that?" he said quietly to the Doctor. "What if he gets a bit… carried away?"

The Doctor shrugged unworriedly. "Well, we have to start trusting him some time, and there isn't much mischief he can get up to here. Might as well let him have his fun. Besides, keeping him constantly on a tight leash would only lead to trouble – if I don't give him a bit of freedom now and then, he'll find his own ways to get it. That could be _bad_."

Musing on further possible traits of Time Lords in general, Amy furrowed her brow and asked, "Did he really sniff the thief out; can your species do that?"

The Doctor gave a sideways head-tilt and hummed. "We do have stronger senses than humans, and the Master happens to have a particularly good sense of smell, so I don't doubt he did. Personally I've got an excellent sense of taste – you'd be amazed what I can find out about a thing by tasting it," he said smugly.

"And that would be why you have to put _everything_ in your mouth, yeah?"

"It's _investigative_," the Doctor said in a slightly hurt tone. "Besides, it could be worse – my last incarnation used to lick everything." He shuddered. "I was quite relieved when that particular trait didn't pass on; some things are not meant to be licked."

Rory patted the hand of the woman, who was staring dubiously at the Doctor and Amy, and said, "It's all right, they're just talking about a, er, video game. That they play. Where they're… crime-solving… aliens. And, uh, they sometimes pretend to really be…" He waved one hand around vaguely and then dropped it in defeat as the woman gave him an even stranger look. "They're a bit odd," he said finally, to which the woman raised her eyebrows and sniffed in agreement. "Sometimes they're definitely a bit odd."

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**A/N: The second half of this part is almost done, so hopefully it won't be too long before it's up. :) **


	7. Bread and Circuses Part 2

**A/N: And here's the second half of the story. ^_^ There's a bit more violence and swearing in this one, as well as just the Master being creepy. Well, creepier.**

**Completely Different, Mafkeesje, The Master Of All Matter –** Thanks! I'm so glad you're all enjoying it! ^_^

**Grumpr –** Like most people, the Doctor occasionally looks back at the things he wore in his youth and wonders, "… What was I thinking?" XD Now, the Master actually has fashion sense; he just chooses not to use it for the most part.

**Mabudachi-trio –** You know, if you think about it, the Master would almost fit in with the Cullens. o.O Fast? Check. Cold? In more ways than one. Ancient? For sure. (Mostly) reformed people-eater? Yep. All he's missing is the sparkles! XD

**Raven-Dragonlady84 –** Maaaaybe. ;) I couldn't resist bringing in a little of Sam Tyler. ^^ Though the Master won't exactly read the thief his rights when he catches him…

**don't-call-me-koschei –** Aww, thank you so much! 8D Oh dear - I hope you haven't exploded while waiting for this to be posted. 0.0

**GuesssWho –** Well, he is _trying_ to be good. How well he succeeds is open to interpretation. X3

**JimandSteve –** There's definitely a dash of Sam Tyler in there. ^^ Ten did seem to lick anything he could get his hands on – doors, electronics, sand, human blood…

**RavenAorla –** I do wonder what it looks like inside a dimensionally transcendental pocket – I imagine there would be a large amount of random knickknacks, string, lint and a few lost civilizations here and there.

**bunyipbabe –** Thank you! He is cute in his insane way, isn't he? ^_^ And he knows it. And seeing as his usual tactics of getting power over people (e.g. hitting them) don't seem to work on Amy, he's willing to try out the charm approach. ;)

**Disclaimer: **_**Doctor Who **_**and all related content and characters belong to the BBC; no infringement is intended.**

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Following the thief's trail, the Master raced down the alley and skidded around the corner into the next street, which was little more than another alley itself, narrow and edged with a high brick wall along one side. In a doorway halfway down the block of grey buildings, he spied a burly young man digging through a brown purse and paused briefly to savour the feeling of getting his prey in sight before stalking slowly forward. Drums or no, he still loved a hunt.

The thief's head jerked up from the bag at the sound of the Master's approaching steps, and as soon as he saw the Time Lord's eyes were fixed upon him he bolted up the street. The Master chuckled and jogged after him, already knowing that he was faster than the much larger human but willing to prolong the chase a little longer. He drew in a slow deep breath, noting with interest and a pang of hunger that he could smell fish and chips cooking nearby – he'd have to come back this way for a snack later on. Ahead of him, the thief swerved to one side of the street and scaled a stack of broken packing crates that were piled against the wall, using the extra height to leap up and reach the top of the wall so he could clamber over it. He looked back at the Master and smirked, kicking the wooden crates away from the wall with one foot, and called out, "See yeh, nancy boy," before swinging down to the other side, his footsteps echoing through the narrow street as he continued running down the alley beyond the wall.

Without slowing or hesitating, the Master ran straight at the wall and launched himself upward, catching the top and easily pulling himself up in one smooth movement. He crouched briefly at the top, watching the running man with a grin, and then leapt forward off the wall and landed in a full-out run, his gait barely faltering as he hit the pavement. The thief looked back in surprise and disbelief when he heard the Master's boots strike the ground, and then fear flickered over his face as he realized just how fast the Master was compared to him. He started running in earnest, panting at the exertion, but within seconds the alien had reached him and pounced, catching the human around the midsection and knocking him forcefully to the ground.

The thief twisted around in his grip and tried to strike the smaller man with the purse, and the Master released him and jumped back into a partial crouch, his eyes glittering with anticipation as he watched the human struggle back to his feet and start running again. Before the man could take more than three steps, the Time Lord leapt at him and threw him down, cuffing him hard over the head with one hand and taking a pace back again, waiting intently for the thief's next move. The man cursed and dropped the purse, scrambling back up and stepping backward away from the Master with his fists in front of him. The Master grinned even wider and moved slowly forward, his body tensed, and the instant the thief glanced behind him with the intention of making a break for it the alien darted forward and seized him, spinning the man roughly around before slamming his body down hard on the road face first. Giving the man another slap across the back of the head for good measure, the Master stepped away from him again and crouched on his haunches, resting his elbows on his knees and propping his chin on his folded hands with a relaxed smile.

The thief rolled on to his back and lay gasping for breath, his nose bleeding, and stared at the Master disbelievingly. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he yelled, trying to scoot backward with his hands while wiping his face against his shoulder.

"Oh, more than you could even imagine," the Time Lord answered cheerfully, rising and stalking toward him again. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears, the pounding of his hearts a pale imitation of the old four-beat rhythm that was burned into his mind, but it was enough to bring some of the old feeling back, some of that crazed madness the drums had always brought out in him. It must have shown on his face, because the human cowered away with widening eyes and raised one hand in meagre defence as the Master approached.

"No! Stay back!" The man scrabbled at the pavement, trying to gain enough purchase to stand, but the Master dashed forward and took firm grip of the thief's curly hair, hauling the shrieking man up to his feet and wrapping his other arm around his throat. "Let me go; please, just let me go!" the man begged, clawing at the Time Lord's arm. "I'll give you anything you want, anything, just don't kill me! What do you want – money? Drugs? Whatever you want, just say! I got a lot of mates, too – tough blokes, they are! Real mean bastards, and you wouldn't want 'em after you, 'cause they'd have you dead in a ditch before the day was out, so you just let me go and – _urk!_"

The Master sighed dramatically as the thief fought to breathe around his abruptly tightened grip. "Humans. You do always have to prattle on, don't you. Do you seriously think you can intimidate me, you pathetic little ape? I'd kill you now if I thought anyone would actually come after me to avenge you. It would make for some good sport, killing them – it might even keep me entertained while I'm forced to hang around this wretched planet. I'm tempted to kill you anyway, so very tempted." He gripped the man's head and brought his mouth to the man's ear, whispering viciously, "I'm hungry, so _very_ hungry. It's been ages since I've had a proper meat meal, _months_, and there's a lot of meat on you. And I do so love human flesh. Bit of a bad habit, I suppose, but…" He shrugged without slackening his hold. "Well. Nobody's perfect."

By this point the thief was blubbering, snot and tears mixed with the blood on his face, and the Master let go of him with a rough shove and stepped back with a disgusted sneer. The man collapsed to his knees, still sobbing, and made no attempt to escape, to the Master's mild disappointment. After a minute, the Master nudged him none too gently in the ribs with the toe of his boot. "Get up. And pick up the bag," he ordered, and the shaking thief crawled over to where he had dropped the purse and slowly took hold of its strap before rising to his feet with a little further assistance from the Master's boot. Once up, he stood trembling and sniffling with the bag in a white-knuckled death grip, not daring to look at the Master. "Good boy," the Time Lord said sweetly. "Now, off we go, _walkies!_" He prodded the cowed man with one finger, a bright grin on his face, and the thief shuffled in the direction indicated with the Master strolling casually behind him.

* * *

"- and that was how I determined that it was A-positive," the Doctor was saying to Amy, who was standing with crossed arms and a skeptical expression. "Really, when it comes to in-the-field analysis, taste beats out just about any other sense with its range of usefulness."

"I still say it's just plain disgusting when you chew stuff up and spit it out like that," Amy insisted. "That's one of my main memories of you, y'know, from when I was little: you spitting food all over the place."

"Beans are evil," the Doctor said firmly. "I stand by my actions." He paused and held up a hand to shush Amy's reply, listening carefully. "Also, I believe there's someone coming." He stood up from the bin he'd been sitting on, absently brushing off his trousers, and Amy drew up to his side and followed his gaze curiously. Sure enough, a man holding a brown purse appeared around the corner, the Master stalking after him in a particularly disturbing fashion, and the Doctor delightedly called, "Ah, good man!" as the two approached.

The woman shrieked and pointed as they came nearer, saying, "That's him! That's the one right there, the ruddy good-for-nothing!" and marched up to the thief. "You give me that back!" she demanded, snatching the bag out of his unresisting hands. "Stealing from an honest woman yet – I've a mind to have my man give you a good thrashing and all."

The thief whimpered and gave the Master a terrified look of submission, and the Time Lord smiled at him brightly and cocked his head at the man. "What should be done with him, Doctor?" he asked, his dark eyes not leaving the thief's face.

"Hmm? Oh… well, I suppose we should let him go, really. From the looks of it you've already given him more punishment than the crime truly deserves." Ignoring the woman's squawk of protest at the suggestion, the Doctor shook his finger sternly at the thief and said, "Let this be a lesson to you about the perils of a life of crime. I hope you'll do the right thing and decide to live honestly from now on. Will you?"

Sniffling and wiping various effluents from his face, the man nodded earnestly, but the Master put his hands on the man's shoulders sharply and stood up on his toes to speak directly into his ear, saying, "Now, now, use your words. My friend wants an answer, and I think you have something you'd like to say to the good lady as well. We must be polite, now, mustn't we?"

After gulping for a few seconds and quivering, the thief nodded again but quickly cut the action short at a warning sound from the Master. "Y-yes, sir," he stammered, shrinking away from the Master. "Yes, sir, I will, sir, I promise, sir, just please let me go. And, uh, I'm sorry, ma'am, I really, _really_ am. I, uh, I hope the bag is okay. Sorry if I, um, got blood on it or anything."

"Good boy," said the Master, patting him friendlily on the shoulder and making the man cringe in terror. "Run along now." The thief looked at him uncertainly, and then at the open street, and back again. "Go on, run," the Time Lord repeated with a smile. "_Run!_" That was all the encouragement the man needed, and he took to his heels and fled in sheer panic, stumbling on occasion as he threw frightened glances back over his shoulder to see if the Master was chasing him. The Master laughed and clapped his hands delightedly as he watched the fleeing thief. "Just look at him go, eh?" he said gleefully. "That's the fastest he's run yet. Are you sure I shouldn't go catch him again?"

"_Quite_ sure," the Doctor said firmly. "I don't want you to go getting yourself into trouble your first day back on Earth. I'm sure he's learnt his lesson from this anyway." He smiled and spun on his heel to face the woman, who clutched her bag and gave him a dubious look, and he extended his hand to her, beaming. When she didn't move to take it, he simply leant forward and grabbed her free hand, shaking it warmly. "A very good day to you, ma'am – I suspect you'll have no further trouble from that gentleman." The woman pulled her hand back the second he released it and hurried up the steps into her house while eying the group with alarmed bewilderment, and the door closed firmly behind her with a click as the lock was turned. "So, now," the Doctor said, rubbing his hands together eagerly. "_You_…" The brown-haired Time Lord twisted around quickly to point at the Master with a slight sly smile. "You called me your friend. I distinctly heard you say it."

The Master sniffed and turned his head away with a slightly studied indifference. "It flowed better than 'this annoying bow-tied bow-legged twerp who I can't seem to be rid of'. Can we go now? I'm starving and I'm sure I smelled a chip shop back there."

* * *

After a brief conference, it was agreed that chips sounded like an excellent idea for lunch, and the small group was soon seated on the concrete steps of a stately if run-down old building, holding paper baskets of battered fish and fresh chips on their laps. Naturally the Master perched himself on the step above the one everyone else had chosen, his boots between Amy and the Doctor, and he tore into his fish while the others ate at a more sedate pace. The Doctor, after munching down several chips, picked up his fish and took a large bite, but after a couple of chomps his face twisted with a revolted expression and he spat the half-chewed wad of sole and batter out on the pavement.

"Ugh, _please!_" Amy groaned. "Don't do that in public – you're embarrassing. What's wrong with it, anyway; you _like_ fish."

"I like fish _custard_," the Doctor corrected. "_This_ is a disgusting abomination that merely masquerades as something edible." He drew his arm back in preparation of hurling the fish away, but before he could do so the Master caught hold of his hand with a growl and snatched the fillet out of it, dropping it into his own tray. The Doctor gave him an anxious look, eying the fish like it might attack at any moment, and the Master pointedly picked up the offending piece of fish and bit a sizable chunk off of it.

"There's nothing at all wrong with it," the Master said irritably as he chewed. "And there's no call to go spitting out perfectly good food." He snaked his free hand down to grab the Doctor's second piece of fish out of the basket where it had been laying untouched and, as soon as he had polished off the first piece, he shoved the entire second into his mouth and swallowed it whole, not even bothering to chew.

Amy stared at him in revolted fascination. "How can you _eat_ like that? Don't you _breathe_ when you eat?" she asked.

The Master held up a pausing finger, waiting for the food to reach his stomach, and once his throat was free again he said simply, "No." He took his last piece of fish out of his basket and gave the tray a light shake, gazing dispassionately at the chips within it before holding the basket out toward the Doctor. "D'you want these?"

The Doctor grinned and took the tray, saying, "Oooh, chips! I like the chips," and he carefully balanced both baskets on his knees, alternating between the two as he sampled chips from each. Amy shook her head with a light snort but said nothing aloud. _They make a proper pair_, she thought with amusement. _The Doctor eats almost nothing, the Master eats almost everything, and what one doesn't like, the other does._ She turned to glance back at the Master and started with shock to find that he was practically hanging over her shoulder, staring fixedly at her fish fillets.

When eying the fish failed to make it teleport into his stomach, the Master instead turned his gaze to Amy and asked, "Are you going to eat that?" He followed the question with a beseeching look and melting hazel eyes that would have been more at home on a lost spaniel than a psychopathic alien – the overall effect was a bit like a Dalek being winsome, somewhere between endearing and terrifying.

Perplexed and just a little bit alarmed, Amy shifted away from him and tried her best to ignore his hovering. Unfortunately, he had a way of being very much _there_ even when she was trying to pretend that he wasn't, as if there was a reversed perception filter that unavoidably drew attention _to_ him rather than making him disappear as she wished him to. She gave a short inward sigh of frustration – she had thought that she'd already endured all of the Master's methods of being annoying, and yet here he seemed to have discovered a new one. Imitating an orphaned kitten wasn't exactly something she would have expected from him, but she had already noticed that the Master didn't have much pride when it came to food and, much to Amy's self-disgust, she couldn't deny that his new tactic was starting to get to her. For all that she disliked him, the Master was capable of being charming when he wasn't being insane. It didn't help that he still looked half-starved from his time stranded on the outpost, his gauntness made even more evident by the light shirt and jacket he was wearing in place of the bulky black hoodie.

Resisting the urge to give in, Amy picked up her half-eaten piece of fish and took a deliberate bite out of it, and then a second mouthful to finish it off. Still chewing, she raised the remaining fillet up and gave the Master what was meant to be a disdainful look, though it was marred somewhat by her cheeks being crammed full of food. He tilted his head winningly, and Amy felt her resolve crumble.

"Oh, for…" she said in exasperation, rolling her eyes, but she handed her fish over to him with a huff, and the victorious Master sat back with his prize and a satisfied smirk, instantly dropping the cute act. "No need to be so overflowing with gratitude," she muttered, glowering at him. "How big is your stomach, anyway?"

"What? I worked up an appetite," he said glibly between bites.

"You've eaten more than all three of us put together!" Amy complained. The Master didn't reply, merely licking off his fingers and then the wrappers the fish had been served in, and Amy huffed again. _Still_, she decided with a sigh, _I guess it's better to encourage him for acting at least marginally normal for a change._ _If doing an Oliver Twist impression counts as normal._

Finishing off the last traces of meat from the empty wrappers, the Master gazed at them for a moment with a disgruntled expression before glancing at his companions. "Any fish left?"

The Doctor pointed across to Rory, saying, "He still has some; don't you, Rory?"

Rory huddled over his fish basket possessively and glared at the Doctor. "I'm not giving him my lunch," he said indignantly. "If he wants more, he can go buy his own instead of scrounging off everyone else."

"Eugh, I wouldn't eat after him anyway," the Master said with a look of distaste at Rory before leaning forward to snag some chips out of one of the Doctor's trays. "What if he's contagious?" Amy scowled at him and slapped him on the shin with the back of her hand in reprimand, but the alien was unfazed by it, merely giving her a light sideways kick to the leg with his boot and continuing with his stolen meal. The Doctor gave them both a warning look, but then, once it became apparent that neither was planning any further violence, he relaxed and returned to his food.

As the four carried on with their meals in comfortable silence, it occurred to Amy that the Master seemed in a much brighter mood, at least compared to his usual sour nature. The opportunity to inflict bodily harm on a terrified victim had apparently done him some good, and he was being almost sociable for a change. _Well, at least he's finally doing something useful instead of just being a pain_, she thought. The memory of the young man's bleeding face came to her, and she grimaced slightly. _Not that beating up people is something I'm too happy about him doing, or about the Doctor letting him do. And going on what the Master's like, that guy probably got off easy. The Doctor had to have known what could happen, sending the Master after him like that, but he did it anyway…_

Her reverie was interrupted by the light scratching sound of chips rolling across paper as the Master slipped her tray off of her lap and up to his own. "Oi!" she said indignantly, grabbing the edge of the paper. "Give that back! Eat your own chips, why don't you?"

"I was nice and shared my chips with the Doctor, so you should be nice and share yours with me," the Master said reasonably, tugging the tray back.

"That's not how sharing works! Just because you gave something away doesn't mean you can steal it from someone else," Amy insisted, trying to pry his hand away from her stolen lunch. She paused and gave him a mischievous smirk. "Didn't the Teletubbies teach you anything?"

He shrugged and tightened his grip on the paper. "I don't watch it for its moral values."

"Obviously. Now gimme my chips back!" As Amy fought with the Master to reclaim her food, she glanced at the Doctor in hopes of support and realized that he was completely ignoring the struggle, instead chatting around them with Rory as if battles over chips were perfectly normal. Then again, 'normal' was a difficult thing to define when one lived in a time traveling police box with a pair of aliens, so perhaps it wasn't such an unusual thing relative to their version of normality.

Taking advantage of her brief distraction, the Master swept the chips out of the tray and into his lap, and Amy dropped the emptied tray and sat back crossly, her irritation only slightly eased by Rory offering her his remaining chips. She took the proffered basket and glared over her shoulder at the alien, who responded by waggling a chip tauntingly at her with an impish grin. Amy rolled her eyes at his childishness and elbowed him lightly on the knee, but she couldn't hold back a small amused smile and had to turn away quickly to hide it. It was unusual for him to be so playful, at least in any way that didn't involve doing horrible things to people, and it made a nice change to see his eyes bright with good humour instead of malice.

As she finished off Rory's chips, she mulled over her thoughts on normality a little more, and after a moment she realized with a thoughtful frown that she'd included the Master in her mental summation of normal TARDIS life. She hadn't expected to become used to him any time soon, and yet somehow he was starting to feel _right_, no longer just a temporary and rather unwelcome visitor. In the two weeks since they had picked him up, the Master had definitely become calmer around them, and despite the frequent shows of hostility and implied future violence, his threats seemed more like afterthoughts, things he had to remind himself to do rather than the sole focus of his life they had been when he first arrived. While it would doubtless be of little comfort to Rory, being the Master's favourite victim, the alien was settling in. He was abrasive, obnoxious and generally insufferable but, whether they liked it or not, the Master was becoming a part of their rather odd family. And maybe, just maybe, that was all right.


	8. Bread and Circuses Part 3

**A/N: Wow, it's been a while. Sorry for the wait, everyone – family matters rendered me computerless for a bit, but rest assured that the story is still active and in progress. :3 This bit was originally floating randomly elsewhere, but it fit nicely with the Bread and Circuses segment, so I wrote it into there.**

**Before moving on to my reviewers, I'd like to say a huge thank you to Brownbug for the shout-out on 'Return to the Valiant'! For those who haven't read Brownbug's 'One Moment in Time' series, it is awesome and you need to read it. :D**

**98Shaddowwolff98**, **KlinicallyInsaneKoschei,** **Jiwa, TatraMegami** and **JimandSteve** – Thank you! Glad you're enjoying it! :3

**Grumpr** – Amy's willing to give just about anyone a chance. ^_^ The Doctor is afraid of his food. XD

**SingingWrenn** – Aww, thank you for the lovely review! I'm glad you think Eleven is in character – I always have to work to keep Ten from sneaking in there. X3 I try to keep the story from getting too dark and heavy, which… we'll see if I can manage it with the chapters that are approaching.

**tigriss** – I'm actually in the (slow) process of sketching that very scene out. ^^ May or may not ever get it done though.

**The Doctor is Theta Sigma** – More than even _badgers?_ :O Is such a thing possible? Thank you! :D

**Brownbug** – Thank you! It was fun to write the Master getting to hunt someone down. X3

**Raven-Dragonlady84** – To the Master, killing is too easy – it's utterly crushing your opponent's spirit that's challenging and fun. ^_^

**GuesssWho** – Oh, he might yet. ;3

**bunyipbabe** – Thanks! ^^ Between them, those Time Lords leave a lot of worried/terrified people behind them. X3

**don't-call-me-koschei** – That's good! ^^ Yes, even with the healthy serving of crazy and vicious, he still manages to be adorable, doesn't he?

**marinawings** – Thank you so much! Hee, it's always fun to write two snarky characters insulting each other, and I'm glad you liked their lines. ^^ I try to keep them all in character, so I'm happy to see that people think I'm succeeding!

**smiles2go** – On occasion when writing the Master, I think "What would a cat do in this situation?" and the answer usually fits him very nicely. X3

**Aietradaea** – Simm played DI Sam Tyler in _Life on Mars_ – great show. ^^ Sam's trademark was his black leather jacket, so the Master got one for his trip to the '70s as a bit of a tribute to LoM for those who know the show. :3 With the Master, there are certainly many ways that he could turn out post-EoT; the way I'm writing him in this story was actually the third version I came up with for him. The first version got repurposed into an AU story instead, and the second one… made EoT-Master look perfectly calm and lucid by comparison. O.o

**BetweenheavenandHell** – Thanks! ^_^ I always like trying to figure out how characters think, and the Time Lords have lots of different things going on with their psyches that make them a lot of fun in that regard. :3

**Disclaimer: **_**Doctor Who **_**and all related content and characters belong to the BBC; no infringement is intended.**

* * *

When the concert was over, the four companions headed back to the TARDIS, the Doctor and the Master in the lead while Amy and Rory trailed a little behind them and chattered excitedly with each other. The Master picked up his pace when the TARDIS came into view around the corner, stalking silently over to it and waiting at the locked door for the Doctor. He hadn't stayed long at the concert, only managing a few minutes before he'd fled for the door to escape the noisy pressing crowds, and he had ended up spending the past several hours skulking outside the auditorium instead while the Doctor kept a watchful eye on him. Something about the way the other Time Lord had been studying him made the Master suspect the Doctor wanted to talk with him about something, and he was hoping to avoid an annoying discussion or, worse, lecture. It was bad enough to have the Doctor scolding him at all, but it added insult to injury to be chastised by a floppy-haired bow tie-wearer who didn't look old enough to drive.

Reaching the ship, the Doctor quickly unlocked the door and pushed it open, stepping inside with the Master close behind him. As soon as they were in, the Doctor swung the door almost closed and leaned in close to the Master with a searching expression. The Master jerked away from him and curled his lip in objection to the unusual proximity of the other man, but even his murderous glare failed to drive the Doctor off. "What?" the blond Time Lord snapped, trying to edge around the Doctor without actually coming in contact with him.

"Why are you being nice?" the Doctor asked, staring hard into his eyes.

"Was I being nice? Thanks for the warning – I'll be more careful in the future," he replied casually, turning away, but the Doctor caught light hold of his arm before he could make his escape.

"Don't try to be flippant, because I know you, and I know you don't do anything unless it serves you, so how does being nice help you? Why are you trying to get close to Amy?"

The Master sniffed irritably and pulled away from the Doctor's grip, crossing his arms and walking up the ramp into the main room before turning to face him again. "I thought you wanted me to be friendly with the humans. You get on my case if I'm not, and it seems you do the same if I am, so tell me: exactly what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to tell me why you were acting differently toward Amy today."

The Master tilted his head back contemplatively, shifting his weight slightly from side to side, and then he smirked. "The television."

Drawing back slightly, the Doctor frowned in puzzlement. "What about it?"

Seeing the confused response, the Master grinned sharply and leaned forward. "You've stopped scanning it."

The TARDIS door opened again as Amy and Rory came in, and the Master winked at the Doctor before spinning on his heel and wandering up to the console platform. The Doctor gazed after him with a slight frown, wondering exactly what the other Time Lord had meant by that. Since running multiple full diagnostic scans on the Master's television and finding nothing of concern, the Doctor had come to the reluctant conclusion that there was nothing out of the ordinary with the device. It went against all his experience with his former adversary, but it seemed the Master had finally created an object that was nothing more or less than what it purported to be, something that was genuinely innocent in nature. There had always been a statistical possibility of it, of course, however improbable, and the Doctor had been unable to find any indication to the contrary, but now he found himself thinking that a year was a lot of time to find a way to conceal something from diagnostic scans. He sighed and made a mental note to scan the blasted thing again the next time he got his hands on it.

* * *

"I met. Freddie Mercury," Rory said for about the seventeenth time, a dazed look on his face. "I shook the hand. Of Freddie Mercury."

"Starting to like this whole time travelling thing now, are you?" Amy said, nudging him in the shoulder with an affectionate grin.

"Freddie. _Mercury_."

The Master rolled his eyes with irritation. "Stop _saying_ that! We get it. We got it the first billion times."

"Well, I see you're in a good mood," Amy said sarcastically, turning a glare upon the alien. While Rory was certainly going on about Freddie Mercury an awful lot, she found it cute how her husband was so excited over the whole thing – Rory usually didn't have much fun on their trips, not having the same adventurous spirit as Amy or the Doctor, and she liked seeing him enthusiastic about one for a change. The concert had been Rory's treat, something he could actually enjoy, and she was _not _going to let the Master spoil it for him.

The alien growled and shook his head. "I will never understand why humans pay huge amounts of money to hear someone sing and then spend the whole time screaming. Usually I'm not opposed to screaming, but that was just ridiculous."

Amy shrugged one shoulder with an indifferent hum. "It's just fun. The point of going to a concert isn't the music, anyway; people go for the experience." Glancing back at the Master, she frowned with mild confusion when she noticed his clothes. "You've changed back into the hoodie," she remarked with some disappointment. "Why didn't you keep the jacket? It suited you."

A low grumble that might have contained muttered words came from the Master as the blond Time Lord shot a dirty look at the Doctor, who gave one of his slightly smug little smiles and leaned comfortably back in his chair before casually saying, "I might have mentioned something about how that used to be _my _leather jacket. I used to wear it all the time, a couple bodies ago; I liked that jacket."

The Master sneered. "As evidenced by how it reeks of Doctor. Do you _ever_ change your clothes or do you just wait until you regenerate out of them?"

"Funny how you didn't notice anything until after I told you," the Doctor said, resting his head back against the railing and smiling serenely at him.

"I thought everything in your wardrobe just smelled like that," the Master snapped back.

"Well, I would have thought you'd expect, seeing as the wardrobe room is, in fact, _my_ wardrobe room, that I may actually have worn the clothes in it at some point."

"I would never expect you to wear anything even vaguely stylish – I assumed the jacket was put in your wardrobe by mistake."

The Doctor opened his mouth to reply back, but Amy waved a hand at him and said genially, "Oh, shut up, the pair of you. Seriously, can't a girl get some peace and quiet in a time machine?" Pouting slightly, the Doctor shifted in his chair and was silent, and the Master gave a light huff and headed for the stairs up toward his room.

As he strode past Amy, she raised her fingers up from the railing in a small friendly wave. "G'night," she said.

The Master pulled up short and stared at her for a moment with a confused expression. Amy gazed back blithely, waiting to see what he would do, and finally the Master gave her a quick perplexed smile and said, "Good night," in return before hurrying up the stairs and disappearing around the bend in the hallway.

Feeling somehow victorious, although she wasn't entirely sure what battle she'd won, Amy smirked and turned around to lean back against the railing, her arms draped along it. Her smile faded slightly when she saw the Doctor watching her with a grim face, and she straightened up and raised her eyebrows at him in mild challenge. "What?"

"Amy, do you remember what I told you when we first picked the Master up?" At Amy's pursed lips and unconcerned shrug, the Doctor gave her a serious look. "'Don't trust him too far'. He's clever, remember, and patient, and he's very, _very_ good at being exactly what people want him to be when it serves his purpose."

"So what is his purpose?" Amy asked, raising an eyebrow again.

The Doctor sat back with a disgruntled expression and sighed. "I don't know," he admitted. "His eventual goal, I imagine, would be to take control of the TARDIS somehow, but it's unlikely he'll try anything along those lines for a while yet. I've no doubt he's setting up his options though, which is why I want you to be very careful around him. You don't want to get caught up in any of his schemes, believe me. They tend to go badly."

"But he can't get control of the TARDIS – you locked it or whatever. He can't go near the controls without getting _bzzzt_ed," Amy said, miming an electrical bolt with her finger.

"Oh, he could find a way. I've no doubt that he already has, actually; he always did have a certain knack with TARDISes."

"What's stopping him from trying to steal it now, then?"

The Doctor smiled slightly, though a little sadly. "I've seen inside his head. His mind is too damaged for him to be safe on his own, and he knows it. All it would take is one psychic predator, one telepathic control device – he'd have no means of defending himself. He could be completely taken over, brought totally under another being's control, and that is something he would never risk, even if it means being stuck here with me."

"And why is that such a bad thing?" Amy asked, resting her elbows on the console. "Sure, you two quarrel like an old couple half the time, but it doesn't seem like you hate each other's company or anything."

The Doctor sighed and folded his hands in his lap, jiggling his foot idly. "Nine hundred years," he said distantly. "That's a long time to know anyone. You can build up a lot of history in nine hundred years, and not all of it good. A lot of it not good at all. And I'd love to think that he's changed, that we can start over, but the fact remains that neither of us will ever fully trust the other. Not anymore. We know each other far too well, and that makes living together rather uncomfortable for both of us."

Amy hummed with a slight frown, poking at the TARDIS controls with one finger, and then paused and glanced up at the Doctor with a look of mild surprise. "Wait, aren't you about nine hundred years old?" At the Doctor's short affirmative nod, she raised her eyebrows speculatively. "And you've known the Master for nine hundred years, you say, which means you've known him all yer life…" She leaned forward on the console, grinning at him. "He's totally your brother, isn't he?"

The Doctor stared at her in shock. "Wha… isn't that just… Tch. Humans!" he finally got out, tossing his hands before himself with frustration. "Why are you all fixated on people being long-lost brothers? This may come as a surprise, Pond, but I'm actually _not_ directly related to every Time Lord that ever existed, no matter what you humans might think."

"You're e_vad_ing the _ques_tion," Amy sang, swaying her shoulders from side to side. "He is _so_ your brother. That's why you drive each other crazy and how you know each other so well, and that's why he wants to get out of here. He doesn't want to get stuck rooming with his baby brother for all eternity; is that it?" she said with a moue of faux sympathy.

The Doctor rolled his eyes and stood, tugging his trouser legs straight. "I absolutely refuse to sit here and listen to your bizarre speculations. I am going for a swim, now – don't wait up." He marched to the stairs stiff-backed, ignoring Amy's wide grin at him and Rory's questioning glance, the human having only just surfaced from his Mercury-worship enough to even realize anyone else had been having a conversation.

"Ex-boyfriend would work, too!" Amy called after the Doctor hopefully, which only increased Rory's confusion. The Time Lord merely gave her an exasperated dismissive wave over his shoulder and continued down the stairs in the direction of the swimming pool's last known location. Still grinning, Amy bounced over to Rory's side and rested her head against his shoulder. "There is definitely a story between those two," she said. "And I'm gonna find out what it is."

"I met Freddie Mercury."

"Yep, I know, Rory," she said with a chuckle, taking her husband's hand and leading him up the stairs from the console room. With no one in the main room, the TARDIS dimmed the lights slightly, and soon the ship powered down the engines for the night as well, until the only sounds to be heard were Rory singing softly in his sleep and distant happy splashing from the swimming pool.

* * *

**A/N: Slightly shorter chapter than usual this time. If you're wondering why Nine's jacket fit the Master despite their obvious size differences, the TARDIS wardrobe room automatically adjusted it to fit him. Because it would be silly to have to replace all the clothes every time someone regenerated. X3**


	9. Burning Questions

**A/N: IT'S ALIVE! I'm so sorry for the ridiculously long time since I last updated this – I discovered a crucial flaw in the plot (A had to happen before B, but B had to happen before A, and neither was possible without the other) and had to do a huge amount of rewriting, rearranging and re-plotting to fix it. That combined with unfortunate other issues going on really squashed my creativity and will to write for a while and made it take a lot longer than expected. ^^; However, all sorted now, and a good chunk of the next ten chapters is already written with the chapters after that mapped out pretty well, so hopefully I will never again leave the story hanging that long.**

**There are too many reviewers since the last update for me to address them all individually, but thank you so much to all of you! Every time I see a new review I end up bouncing around with glee as I read and re-read it, and it's so wonderful to see that people are still reading and enjoying my work – even getting a new follower notification makes my day. :3 You guys are all awesome, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the story!**

**Disclaimer: ****_Doctor Who _****and all related content and characters belong to the BBC; no infringement is intended.**

* * *

It had been a quiet few days since the concert in Stafford, at the Doctor's insistence. "After that racket, I doubt any of you would even be able to _hear_ me yell 'Run!' at you, so what's the point?" he'd complained, though no one had objected to the brief vacation from their travels. Amy was happy to have some time to relax for a change, and Rory was just glad to be out of the TARDIS and away from the Master, who had shoved him off of the console platform for unwittingly singing 'You're My Best Friend' in his presence. The Time Lord had been particularly snippy in fact, much to Amy's frustration – she almost had the feeling he was trying to make up for what little pleasantness he had exhibited earlier, and it made him impossible to talk to.

Fortunately the planet Pela had sufficient diversions to make talking to the Master for any length of time unnecessary. The TARDIS had been parked on the sand under the waving fronds of a gigantic silvery orange fern, and the warm breeze coming up from the beach made the feathery leaves dance and brush over each other with a delicate shimmering sound. The effect was wonderfully calming, and it became even more so when combined with gently rolling surf breaking on a long span of pearlescent beach, lavender skies dotted with gold-tinted clouds, and the perpetual sunset tones of the red-orange sun overhead.

A slightly creaky old deck chair had been brought up from the depths of the TARDIS and set outside near the doors, and Amy sat down in it and fanned herself with the large straw hat Rory had insisted she wear while on the beach. The Doctor had already told him several times that the sun's radiation wasn't harmful so long as one didn't eat carrots, but the nurse had remained unconvinced. It appeared the Doctor had been correct about the harmlessness of the sun's rays – after two days, Amy still didn't have even a trace of a tan – but it was high noon and the breeze had died down a bit, and the fern's shade was a welcome respite from the heat on the exposed sand.

She dropped the hat into her lap and carefully leaned back in the chair, watching as Rory and the Doctor wandered along the shoreline in search of brightly-coloured shells, until a faint whistling caught her ear and she squinted into the shade cast by the TARDIS. "How can you stand to wear that hoodie on a day like this?" she asked the figure crouched there, but the Master didn't look up from his television, apparently riveted by the adventures of Tiny Clanger. When he didn't reply, Amy shrugged and turned back to face the ocean. "Fine; be unsociable as you like. Everyone else is out having fun, but go ahead and sulk in a corner instead. I'm sure that's much more fun than lying on the beach or going for a swim like some normal person."

The Master glared balefully over his television at the water. "I despise the seaside. He _knows_ that," he grumbled. "And I loathe sand and don't care for being out in the sun. This is his way of getting back at me, I'm sure of it."

"Because going somewhere everyone else really likes is clearly meant just to annoy you," Amy said, rolling her eyes. "Anyone ever tell you the universe doesn't revolve around you?"

"I'm a Time Lord. It sort of _does_."

"In that case, tell the universe to get me a nice tropical drink. Something in a coconut, maybe, with one of those funny little umbrella thingies. The TARDIS can make one of those, right?" The Master shrugged one shoulder disinterestedly and returned to his show. Briefly Amy pondered investigating the TARDIS's drink-mixing abilities on her own, but the shade was cool and the deck chair comfortable, and she decided it could wait until the Doctor came back. But in the meantime… "You and the Doctor," she said casually, sitting forward and clasping her hands in her lap. "You've known each other a long time, yeah?"

"You could say that."

"Over nine hundred years, the Doctor said."

"Did he indeed?" the Master said in a tone of pure boredom.

There was a pause as Amy waited in hope that he might volunteer even a tidbit of information, but her wait was in vain as he ignored her in favour of watching the puppets on his screen. Once it became apparent that he wasn't planning to say anything further on the subject, she waved one hand slightly in an encouraging motion. "Sooooo… how'd you guys meet?"

The Master grimaced, though Amy wasn't sure if it was at the question or her persistence in talking to him. "Not certain, but I vaguely recall him bashing me over the head with a Roentgen brick. It wasn't the best introduction."

"Oh, I dunno," Amy said, running her fingers lightly along the brim of the hat. "The first time I met him after I'd grown up, I hit him with a cricket bat and handcuffed him to my radiator, and we still get along fine."

"So I've noticed," the Master grumbled. "You really do think he's just _marvellous_, don't you?"

Amy chuckled with a glance at the TARDIS and the alien landscape around her. "Travelling around all space and time, saving worlds, meeting famous people from the past… yep, I'm calling him pretty marvellous. Who wouldn't?"

The Master snorted and shook his head slightly. "Shall I write you a list? I'm afraid you have a rather skewed view of him, Amy Pond; his defining trait is the trail of destruction he leaves in his wake, not that he often realizes what damage he's brought about. He just wanders on his way again, blissfully trusting in Time to fix itself and never for a moment thinking it might not." He grinned sharply and tilted his television screen to indicate himself. "Or that someone else might take advantage of the mess he's made. Really, I should thank him for that Harriet Jones fiasco – there she is, about to bring in Britain's new Golden Age, and he goes and destroys her career in a fit of pique. I took the opportunity to fill that temporal gap, and, oh, it was a _very_ different future on Earth for a while." His eyes gleamed for a second as he recalled it with a distant and almost predatory smile, but then he sighed and slumped back, rolling his eyes in annoyance. "But of course, when _I_ do something to affect the future, it's always all 'you're altering the course of history!' and 'you're damaging the temporal matrix!', because it's only okay when _he_ does it."

"Probably 'cause he only changes things to make them better and help people," Amy countered. "I don't know what changes you would've had in mind, but I'll bet it wouldn't have been anything good."

The Master chuckled and rose fluidly to his feet, switching off his television and tucking it away in his front pocket as he stepped out of the shade. "Good is in the eye of the beholder," he said, carefully straightening the cuffs of his sleeves before tilting his head to look sidelong at her with a slightly unnerving smile. "I play rather more roughly with my toys, I'll admit, but it's still just a game for us both. He meddles because it entertains him to do so, and I do the same, and most of the time we act purely to spite the other and damn the consequences."

"Oh, please," Amy said, shaking her head and leaning back comfortably in her chair. "The Doctor's not spiteful. Even _you_ can't accuse him of that. There's only one of you two who's spiteful, and he's the one who's blocking my view right now."

In response the Master strolled over to stand directly before her, resting his hands on either side of the chair's frame. "Hmm. You may be right there," he admitted with an exaggeratedly serious nod as Amy slapped irritably at his arms in a futile effort to make him move away again. "But you can hardly deny that he has little concern for the outcomes of his actions. He acts on feeling and emotion, not sense. If he used his brain more than his hearts, he'd have killed me centuries ago, and yet…." He spread his arms out wide and flashed a broad grin at her. "Compassion and nostalgia can make such a fool of a man."

"Considering you're only still around because of his 'foolishness', I'd think you'd be more grateful that he has it," Amy retorted, scowling at him. "It's not like you've done anything to thank him for rescuing you, either – all you do is whine, insult everyone and eat everything in sight."

"At least I'm not insulting every_thing_ and eating every_one_." He shrugged. "See? There're things you should thank me for, too. And it's that same bleeding-hearts complex that's made him hold back on humanity rather than wiping your kind out, which negates any positive feelings I may have had toward him on _that _score. He really thinks you'll all become better if he just loves you enough. Still, even he has his limits – eventually some ape will really get his goat and he'll just give up and torch the place."

Amy scoffed. "Oh, like he would."

"He already burnt our planet; why stop there?" At Amy's confused expression the Master raised his eyebrows gleefully, twisting at the waist to watch the Doctor's receding figure as the other alien disappeared around a short sandy point. "What, has he never mentioned that one? How odd. Yes, he has been known to break out the old fire and brimstone routine on occasion. There's more than one planet in the sky that's nothing but a burnt husk because of him, and more than one species exterminated by his hand, too. It's what he turns to when loving them didn't work. But it's okay," he said in a consoling manner, bending forward over her with his hands clasped behind him. "He always feels _really_ bad about it afterward."

"Shut up," Amy said, glaring up at him. "You're lying."

"Okay, maybe he doesn't feel _that_ bad about it."

Amy rolled her eyes and returned to fanning herself with the hat, pointedly ignoring him, and the Master turned gracefully on his heel and returned to the shade. He flopped down on the sand and rested back against the TARDIS, gazing out at the rolling waves, and for a while they both sat in a silence that was serene on the Master's part and seething on Amy's. _Ugh, why did I even bother trying to talk with him?_ she thought, giving him a narrow look from around the hat. _I was having such a nice day, and he had to go and be horrible all over it_.

Deciding that the Master really did just enjoy getting others upset, Amy resolved to not give him the satisfaction of thinking she was angry with him, and so she assumed as unaffected an expression as she could and pretended she was sitting alone. It wasn't like she was angry anyway – his vicious lies weren't worth being bothered about, and they were obviously lies. She knew her Doctor, her kind wonderful Doctor, and there was no way he would go around burning planets. Well, unless there was no other option, of course. Or maybe if they _really_ deserved it… like maybe a planet with nothing but Daleks and Weeping Angels on it. Or maybe –

"See, the thing you don't realize is that the Doctor is just like me," the Master piped up, and Amy slumped back in her chair with a growl and stuck the hat on her head, pulling the brim down with both hands. It seemed he was going to make it difficult to convince herself that he didn't exist. "We're the wrathful gods, as were the Time Lords of old. Commanding the lesser species is our birthright, and one that we both claim. I use discipline and order to achieve my goals, he prefers the lovey-dovey group hug approach, but at the end of the day they're either marching to our beat or destroyed. Oh, he likes to cloak himself in sanctimonious virtue and claim the moral high ground, an avenging angel dealing out divine retribution, but underneath it all he and I are very much alike. I'm just more honest about what I am."

The chair squeaked loudly in protest, threatening to topple in the uneven sand as Amy clambered out of it, but she managed to rise from its vividly striped fabric seat and strode over to the Master. "You only _wish_ you could be even half what the Doctor is!" she said angrily, standing over him with her arms folded crossly over her chest. "I know what you're trying to do, and I know you think you're oh so clever and can twist everyone around all you like, but you're nothing next to him. He does great things for people all the time, just because he can, and he's brilliant and amazing and makes everything better. You wouldn't believe some of the things he's done."

The Master met her eyes levelly. "Neither would you." Taken aback, Amy opened her mouth to retort but couldn't think of anything to say. At her hesitation, the Master sighed and leaned his head back against the TARDIS, and Amy was surprised to see a flicker of sadness cross his face. "You're too innocent," he said tiredly. "You can still believe in people, believe in _him_, with all your heart. But eventually he will let you down. He always does."

There was an unusual quietness to his voice as he spoke, and his downcast gaze made Amy wonder if he was still only talking about her. Thinking on it, her mind went back to the Doctor's words from a few days earlier - _neither of us will ever fully trust the other. Not anymore_. At the time she'd only thought of the Doctor and how the Master must have betrayed him to cause such a rift, but now it occurred to her that perhaps the Master had once trusted the Doctor, too. Despite herself, she couldn't help feeling a slight twinge of empathy toward the alien, and she crouched down to face him and rested her chin on her folded hands. "Doesn't mean he's not still worth believing in."

He tilted his head contemplatively with a faint frown, glancing down the beach again, and then looked at her curiously. "Why did you hit him?"

Amy blinked and raised her head. "Huh? I haven't hit him."

"With the cricket bat. You said you hit him and chained him to the radiator, so I assume there must have been a reason. Unless that's how you usually greet people."

Sitting back on her heels, Amy huffed with frustration at the abrupt change in discussion. _Just when I think I'm starting to get somewhere with him…_ "Because I was annoyed with him, stupid. He was late, twelve _years_ late; I was hardly going to break out the tea and biscuits for him, was I?"

The Master shrugged. "He's not very good at keeping appointments. You're hardly the first person he's left waiting for a decade or two. So how long did he tell you he'd be away?"

Amy paused and sighed. "Five minutes."

That made the Master do a double-take, raising an incredulous eyebrow at her and then shaking his head with an amused chuckle. "Impressive. Even for him, that might be a record. But then, that's the Doctor all over." Once again he peered past her, and this time he grimaced and stood, brushing sand off the legs of his black jeans. "Oh, and here they come, the intrepid explorers returned. Ech. I'm going inside." Amy turned and craned her neck to see around the ferns to the beach beyond, and she soon spotted the Doctor and Rory coming back toward the TARDIS. Their voices were drowned out by the gentle surf, but even so she could tell that it was the Doctor who was doing most of the talking, and she smiled and waved to the pair. Behind her the TARDIS door creaked as the Master went in, and she pushed herself to her feet and wandered toward the two approaching men.

"Have much luck?" she asked as they drew nearer, and in response Rory held up a canvas bag filled to the brim with shells. "Nice," Amy said, peeking into the bag and pulling out a vibrantly pink and blue specimen to admire it. "Wow, you've got dozens in here! Um, what are we going to do with all of 'em?"

"I was thinking we could use them in the front garden when we get home, maybe line the path with them or something," Rory said, digging into the bag to bring out a few more particularly fantastic shells. "These ones could go on the bookshelf, too, and there's a big one in here that would look nice by the telly…" He paused and looked at the Doctor suspiciously. "They won't come back to life and try to take over the world or eat people, will they?"

"Oh, no, these ones are completely uninhabited and non-take-over-the-world-y," the Doctor assured him. "Though you _might_ want to watch out for those blue ones."

"O…kay," Rory said slowly, eying him. "I'll make a note of that." Turning back to Amy, who was sifting through the collection and picking out her favourites, he said, "I was thinking we could pop back to Leadworth to drop these off at the house, get some fresh groceries, that sort of thing. Is there anything you need from home?"

Amy gave a distracted shrug, still gazing at the shells in her hands but no longer focused on them. She was aware of the Doctor standing nearby, and yet she found she couldn't quite look at him as the Master's words drifted through her mind, refusing to be completely silenced. Much though she wished she could just disregard what he'd said and not think about it any further, it seemed that the questions raised weren't going to go away until they'd been answered.

Realizing that Rory was waiting for her to reply, she glanced up at him. "Um, yeah. I've got a few things I want to pick up. Are we going right now? Better get that chair back in." Rory handed her the bag of shells and picked up the deck chair, folding the unwieldy frame and trying clumsily to tuck it under his arm before carrying it into the TARDIS.

The Doctor started to follow him to the TARDIS but then paused and turned back to Amy with a concerned expression. "Are you all right?" he asked her quietly. "You look a bit…."

"I'm fine," she said, forcing a smile. "Just warm out here, that's all." That didn't seem to convince him, but he tilted his head in acceptance and continued on his way. His foot was just barely across the threshold of the TARDIS door when Amy found herself blurting out, "Is it true that you burnt your planet?"

The Doctor drew to an abrupt halt and spun around, rocking back on his heels slightly. "Ah… right. You've been talking with the Master. That's often a very not good idea – you should be careful with that. It can lead to bad things." Amy searched his face, and after a moment of silence he sighed and waved one hand. "Yes, yes, I suppose it's true. In a manner of speaking, at least; I was a different man back then, different time. But it had to be done. I'd tried everything else, everything I could think of, and if I'd done nothing, well, the whole universe would have been destroyed. Time itself would have been wiped out, ceased to exist, and we all know how _that_ turns out, don't we?"

Amy contemplatively swayed back and forth for a few seconds, tracing patterns in the sand with the toe of her boot while she mulled the information over, and finally she looked up at him again with a small smile. "Okay. If you say it had to happen, then it must've been the only thing to do." The Doctor shuffled his feet uncomfortably and said nothing, and Amy squirmed as the awkward silence stretched out. In an attempt to break it, she asked teasingly, "Does that happen to you a lot, then, having to save the universe?"

"I wouldn't call it a usual day, but it does come around with a certain regularity."

Amy laced her fingers under her chin and gave a contemplative hum. "It's a good thing you're always there then. Have you ever noticed how we always seem to end up somewhere that needs saving?"

The Doctor heaved a disgruntled sigh in agreement. "Quite. I suspect it's a glitch in the TARDIS's systems, pulling her off-course toward complicated space-time events. Anything that has the potential to cause a massive change in time generates turbulence, the TARDIS gets caught in it, and we end up somewhere or somewhen quite different from where I intended. I've been meaning to fix that, but I never seem to find the time."

"Too busy saving the universe, I guess."

"Well, that could certainly be a factor." He hesitated, his brow furrowing slightly, and then he drew a deep breath and held it for a second. "Amelia…. About what the Master –"

"It's fine," she interrupted quickly, smiling at him. "Really. I know you made the right choice."

"Right, then. Good," the Doctor said, though without much conviction, and his eyes studied her face intently before finally flicking away. He hovered in the doorway briefly before tapping his hand on the frame and going in, leaving Amy standing outside. She stared down at the ground, nibbling her lower lip, but then shook her head and followed him, closing the door firmly behind her.


	10. Communication Breakdown Part 1

**A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews! It's good to be back! ^^**

**An update – **Aww, thank _you_! Yeah, it's been a while; I'm not surprised people thought it was long since dead. x)

**Ravenlupa the DragonSage84 **– So far there's nothing planned for this fic that will go into the actual episodes – right now it's all happening between 'A Christmas Carol' and the start of Season 6. It's a mark of how long I've been writing this that, when I started it, 'A Christmas Carol' hadn't come out yet and there _was_ no Season 6 to write about or work into the plot. O.o I do have a snippet of 'The Doctor's Wife' with the Master in it though, which I might eventually tidy up and post as a one-shot. :)

**Sage Q **– Sanctuary avatar! 8D Currently River's not planned to be in the fic beyond occasional references, like in this chapter, because when it was first plotted out River's background was still almost entirely unknown and I didn't want to end up with major inconsistencies between my story and canon. =/ Probably just as well, considering that what I was thinking for her would have majorly conflicted with what actually happened, but she might still be in other fics involving the Master later on. ^^

**GoodApollo – **Thank you so much! ^^ I'm glad you like it! :D

**versenaberrie – **Yup! :) I hope you enjoy this new one as well!

**Person-without-a-FF.N-account **– Hee, thank you! ^^ It's always good to hear that I'm writing the characters and their interactions believably, especially with characters who never actually met in the show itself. I shall certainly attempt to keep it up, and thank you again! :3

**Disclaimer: ****_Doctor Who _****and all related content and characters belong to the BBC; no infringement is intended.**

* * *

With a tremendous wheezing and rumbling of engines the TARDIS shuddered to a stop, and the Doctor sprang up from the floor to swing the monitor over and check where they were. "Ah!" he crowed. "Right on time, no one around to see us, missed the shed, not in the flowers, and in short…" He twirled in a circle with his hands raised in a triumphant flourish at Amy, who was sprawled on her back under the console with one hand still grasping the support bar. "A perfect landing."

"No matter how many times you say that, River's still a better pilot than you," Amy said, hauling herself up and poking her head around the rotor column to see where Rory had ended up. At least the Master wasn't a concern this time – he had retired to his room as soon as they'd all returned to the TARDIS and hadn't emerged since. "She actually keeps the floor _under_ us when she's flying." Across the platform, Rory disentangled himself from the yellow chair he'd been thrown behind and nodded in silent agreement.

The Doctor's face fell and he gave them a slightly sour look, but then a slow smile grew across his face. Leaning close, he gave Amy a conspiratorial nudge with his shoulder. "My way's more fun though," he said, his voice soft but assured. In resistance to the Time Lord's knowing grin and sparkling green eyes Amy struggled to keep a poker face, but as he raised his eyebrows expectantly she felt giggles bubbling up that she finally couldn't hold back any longer, and the Doctor pointed gleefully at her. "Ha-_ha_, gotcha!"

Standing and stretching a crick out of his back, Rory joined the two at the console. "I could do with a bit less fun, actually. Are we back in Leadworth now?" he asked, reaching for the monitor. His hand was batted away by the Doctor before he could touch it, and he shrugged and held his hands up in surrender. "Okay. Just wondering."

"Of course we're in Leadworth – pay attention, Rory," the Doctor replied peevishly. "Specifically, in your own back garden and just before lunch. Which reminds me: if the Master should bother to surface while we're here, make sure _not_ to let him out unless he's already eaten. We don't want any accidents with the neighbours." At the implications Rory grimaced and Amy cocked her head thoughtfully, but the Doctor didn't wait for any reply from them before he clapped his hands eagerly. "Well, come on, you two! No point dawdling all day!" He leapt down the stairs to the main floor and jogged to the doors, flinging them open and striding out. A sharp sound of shattering pottery immediately echoed through the TARDIS, and the Doctor's voice called back, "I've broken your geraniums."

The Ponds exchanged tired glances that quickly became alarmed, and Rory yelled after him, "Doctor, we don't _have_ any geraniums!" There was no reply, and he gave Amy a frustrated look. "What's with the big rush anyway? He never gets this excited about Leadworth."

Amy pursed her lips and leaned back against the console with a light shrug, folding her arms. "I may have told him we had several boxes of fish fingers in the freezer." At Rory's sigh, she said defensively, "You said you wanted to get home right away."

"We'd better catch him before he breaks into someone's house," he said, heading down the stairs, but he paused at the base of them. "We _are_ in Leadworth though? Definitely?" Amy twisted to see the monitor behind her and nodded, and Rory continued on his way with a little more confidence.

The Doctor's voice drifted in through the TARDIS doors, cooing "Who's a good doggy, then? Yes, you are! Aren't you just a lovely big fellow? Now stand back so I can get this open…", and Rory bolted outside after him while Amy rested her forearms on the railing and waited. Amid the sounds of deep barking and Rory's panicked yells of "Wrong house! Wrong house! That dog is not friendly!", she idly wandered over to the monitor and noted that the ship had landed one street over from their place, although the time at least did seem spot on.

_Well, that's some consolation at least, _she thought, studying the readout carefully. _Ah, and _there's_ why we ended up here instead – those two numbers're swapped around. Put the right number in and we'll land right on the garden walk._ Pleased with herself for working it out, Amy went back to the railing with a smirk. _Oh, Doctor. _I_ could probably fly this thing better than you if you taught me how. Hmm, wonder if he would? Or maybe the Master would… No. Asking _him_ for flying lessons would probably be a really bad idea._ She sighed and propped her chin up on her hand. _And so, the Girl Who Waited has to sit around waiting some more. As usual._

* * *

Once the Doctor and Rory made their hasty return and had slammed the door shut behind them, Amy pointed out the navigational error, which the Doctor corrected while scolding both humans for not saying anything about it sooner. "_Really_," he huffed, yanking down a lever and clinging to it as the TARDIS shook, "if people just paid a little more attention and didn't always pester me when I'm trying to set coordinates, this sort of thing wouldn't happen. I'll have you know those were some very nice geraniums."

Standing next to him and gripping the edge of the console, Amy watched his movements carefully as the ship settled down again. "Yeah, about the coordinates thingy," she said as he peered at the monitor, "I was thinking, y'know, since I already kind of know how that works and which controls do what, that maybe you might teach me how to fly the TARDIS." The Doctor gave her an incredulous look, and she frowned at him. "What? You taught River, so why not us? Or is that only for your _very_ special friends?" She tucked her chin down and gave him a coquettish moue from behind her shoulder, hoping to tease him into agreeing. "C'mon. Please? Just a little bit? For emergencies?"

Rory quickly raised his hand. "Amy, remember that one time I let you drive my car? _You_ were the emergency."

"Shut up!" Amy hissed at him before turning back toward the Doctor, but the alien had already moved on, bounding down the stairs and to the doors. "Besides, I've flown the TARDIS before and nothing bad happened." Seeing her husband's surprised expression, she waved one hand dismissively. "That was when you were… either dead or a plastic Roman."

The Doctor called over, "Looks okay out there - definitely got the right place this time." As the Ponds joined him at the open door he swept one hand out to indicate the garden they'd landed in, and Amy noted with relief that it was indeed their own house.

"Great, we'll just run in, drop off the shells and grab our stuff then," Rory said, rubbing his hands together. "It shouldn't take very long." Amy elbowed him firmly on the arm, not looking at him, and he paused and slowly corrected that to, "This… might take a while?" That met with Amy's approval, and after a moment of thought Rory's eyes widened and he nodded keenly. "Oh… yeah. A while. Maybe quite a while."

"You go ahead," the Doctor said, waving them out the door. "I'm going to wait for the Master, make sure he doesn't go wandering off out here." The humans quickly made their exit, and the Time Lord strolled back to the console and busied himself with flicking switches and scanning readings until he heard soft footsteps coming down the upper stairs. "About time," he grumbled, glancing up. "I thought you were _never_ going to show up."

The other Time Lord made a rude gesture and joined him by the console, rubbing his eyes with his sleeve and blinking blearily at the lights; casting a sidelong glance at the Master, the Doctor noticed that his clothes and blond hair were even more rumpled than usual. _Is he sleeping in the middle of the day now?_ he thought, frowning slightly, but he said nothing, instead turning his attention back to the dials he was adjusting until the Master asked, "So, what marvellously exciting backwater have you landed us in this time?"

"Leadworth," the Doctor replied, twisting a knob curiously and quickly spinning it back when the rotor column gave a warning hum.

"_Still?_ But I thought… Where were we before?"

"Also Leadworth." At the Master's puzzled look, the Doctor drew in a breath and held it for a second, gesturing vaguely with his hand. "There was a slight… discrepancy in the coordinates that had to be corrected."

"You landed in the wrong place, as usual," the Master said flatly, hooking his elbows over the railing and gazing at the Doctor while he worked. "You know, you should really give me at least some access to the TARDIS controls – I've always been better with ships than you, and _I_ actually passed my flight exams. Could be useful in an emergency, and I could fix those stabilizers you're fiddling with, too. It's bad enough that you're a rubbish pilot; we don't need to be rattled to pieces every time the old bucket takes off."

The Doctor sniffed at him and turned to pat the TARDIS console comfortingly. "'Old bucket'! Never mind, old girl; we both know that -" His hand froze in mid-pat, and he spun back to face the Master. "What did you say?" The Master squinted at him, perplexed as to his meaning, and the Doctor strode over to him. "Amy just asked me to let her fly the TARDIS, not moments ago, 'for emergencies', she said. And now you're asking for the same thing. Why?"

The Master stared at him in silence, his expression shifting, and the Doctor watched him intently. Usually he found his counterpart's latest face very easy to read, every emotion in plain sight, but this time he couldn't quite figure out what was behind it. Finally the Master shrugged. "Because any time someone has to suffer through your flying, they immediately think about how much better a job they could do of it?" The Doctor continued to eye him suspiciously, and the blond Time Lord sighed with aggravation and rolled his head back. "Oh, I suppose you think I've hypnotized her and that under my malign influence she's planning to steal the TARDIS for me. Well, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not much up for the hypnotizing these days. And even if I did get your TARDIS," he added bitterly, "where would I go?"

That made the Doctor pause, and he tilted his head slightly in acknowledgement. Regardless of what the Master might have in mind for the future, the Doctor knew he would never show his hand until he was actually ready to play it, which he certainly wasn't at the moment. Unusual though it was, it seemed the Master was probably telling the truth, and he rather reluctantly eased back from the other man and forced himself to relax. "Right. Okay, then. Just checking."

"What, that's it?" the Master said, and at the Doctor's brief nod he slapped one hand over his hearts in mock anguish. "No apology for flinging false accusations at me? No protestations that you always believed in my innocence? I am wounded to the core that you would suspect me of such misdeeds, after all our long years of friendship, the boundless regard I've always held for you -"

"Don't push your luck," the Doctor replied drily, walking down the stairs. "You can take it as an expression of my trust that I'm letting you hold the fort for a bit. I've got fish fingers to attend to, and Amy and Rory seemed to think they'd be busy for some time, so you're to stay put until we get back."

The Master groaned, folding his arms and resting forward against the railing as the Doctor left. "While I'm not exactly aflame with anticipation at the prospect of seeing Leadworth, I hardly see any reason for me to sit around in here all day," he complained.

The Doctor twirled in the doorway to face him, already with one foot on the path outside. "How about because every human on the planet knows your face? Former British Prime Minister, the man everyone turned into last Christmas, one of the most notorious men in recent Earth history; we can't risk someone recognizing you and causing a fuss. Just stay here and keep out of trouble until I get back." He disappeared out the door, but then ducked his head around the corner and shouted, "And don't touch anything!" before darting out again and pulling the door shut, leaving the Master and his withering glare inside.

* * *

Sighing, the Master slouched over to his usual chair and sat down, regarding the empty console room. He didn't mind being alone, even preferred it, but he had to admit it did get _boring_ after a while. At least when people were there he could mock them mercilessly for his own amusement, but it was impossible to start a quarrel when he was alone. Except with the TARDIS herself, of course, but he already knew too well that she would win _and_ make his life miserable for days afterward. It just wasn't fun fighting with a machine that would wilfully electrify the food replicator.

Damn. Now he was thinking about food again. Perhaps the Doctor would bring some extra fish fingers back with him, although the possibility didn't arouse much excitement. In his gut the Master knew it wasn't food of the cooked variety that he craved, or even the already-dead variety, come to that. He gazed longingly at the door, wondering if anyone would notice if he popped out for a quick snack. It wasn't like there were many people around to see him, and surely there were a few stray cats around the place that no one would miss. To his irritation and slight embarrassment, that idea made his mouth water, and he slumped back in the chair and tried to ignore both that and the pangs in his stomach.

Try as he might to satiate it, the gnawing hunger that had been present ever since his resurrection still plagued him. He'd become resigned to it being a permanent feature, yet another mark of the damage done by Lucy's cursed death potion, but that didn't make it any less maddening when he could eat to the point of pain and still be ravenous. If anything it was getting worse over time. It wasn't like eating did nothing for him though – he had regained much of the weight he'd lost, and food certainly helped clear his head and push away the incessant faint voices that prowled in the back of his mind.

Abruptly he sat bolt upright in the chair, his eyes widening as he realized what his lapse of attention had caused, but even as he tried desperately to wrench his mind on to a different path he knew he'd caught it too late. At the casual brush of his thoughts against them, the whispers had stirred and were already responding enthusiastically, tendrils weaving out to take advantage of the brief connection and coiling tightly around it, forcing it to stay in place despite his efforts to tear it away. The noises were getting stronger now, taking over from the voices and rising inexorably up, spreading thickly across the mental link as his vision began to fade out under the thundering of blood and battle and screams –

"No!" he snarled, jumping to his feet and slamming his hand down on the TARDIS console. An arc of vengeful electricity snapped out and lashed across his arm with a sharp crackle, striking with enough force to throw the Master back a step, and he stumbled backward into one of the chairs. Clutching his sore arm and trying to shake some feeling back into his hand, he swore vehemently through his slightly hysterical laughter. There were some benefits to the TARDIS's dislike of him, one of which was the easy access to a short sharp shock when necessary – there was nothing quite like it for derailing dangerous thoughts. At the jolt his mind had gone quiet again, the brainwaves disrupted enough to snap the connection, but he could still feel his hearts pounding wildly from more than just the electricity.

He raised his head and let his eyes drift around the room in search of a distraction, but there was little to do when no one was around. Lacking anything else, the Master stuck his hand into his front pocket in search of the television, his usual refuge. For all that the Pond girl ridiculed his watching of children's shows, there was something oddly charming about the innocent worlds they depicted, so unlike the stories told to children of Gallifrey that were all about duty, tradition, and the Toclafane who snipped the noses off of bad little boys. He'd never cared much for those stories.

As he drew it out of his hoodie he flipped the device over to see the front, but the instant his eyes landed on the screen he recoiled with a yell and pitched backward off the chair, flinging the screen away from him in horror. It hit the far chair and bounced harmlessly on to the padded seat, and the Master scrambled back until he was pressed hard against the platform railing, his boots slipping on the glass floor as he tried to scrabble even a little further from where it lay.

The screen hadn't been turned on, still had the switch firmly set to 'off', and yet an image was clearly displayed on it in full horrible detail. There, with its tentacles in chains and its shattered casing still coated with clinging white nerve tissue, was the grotesque twisted form of a Dalek.


	11. Communication Breakdown Part 2

**A/N: First of all, on to my lovely reviewers!**

**Lihkan –** *Ten impression* Oh, yes!

**Person-without-a-FF.N-account –** Yep, he's not done with the Master yet. ;3 If it's any consolation, the Master doesn't care much for the thought of kitty snacks either; he _likes_ cats. He just… likes them in a few other ways, too. xD

**Unformal Sorrelle –** He can't understand why people don't realize he's an excellent driver. x3

**friendlyquark –** Wow, thanks for all the reviews! ^^ Thank you for all the kind words, and apologies for any damage to your monitor. X3 Those were some of my favourite lines to write, and I'm glad you enjoyed them as well!

**evilpinklollipop – **Aww, thank you! ^^ I'll do my best – I'm hoping to keep updating in an at least vaguely reasonable timeframe from now on, so hopefully you won't have to wait too long between chapters. :3

**GuesssWho – **More like… well, you'll see. ;3 Great to see you're still following this, by the way! ^^

**Guest –** That's about what the Master's thinking, too. X3

**Sweets And Charades –** Thank you so much! :D That really means a lot to me, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the story as well! ^^

**Disclaimer: ****_Doctor Who _****and all related content and characters belong to the BBC; no infringement is intended.**

* * *

_It's not there, there's nothing there. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. All quiet, all safe. _No, not quite quiet. There was something there, but the Master could tell somehow that it wasn't a threat. He didn't know for sure where he was, but it was somewhere safe. It was dark now. Dark was good. They couldn't find him in the dark. _There's no 'they', there's no one. There's nothing coming; they're all gone, dead and gone and pulled apart. They're just dust._ Dust… He knew dust. Was that where he was, still in that empty place, all dust and grit and grey? He hadn't thought he was, but perhaps he was mistaken.

There was really nothing for it but to check. He didn't want to – he wanted to stay where it was dark and warm and safe - but the longer he held back the more the fear grew that the sound he was hearing was just the wind, that his safe dark place was just the space under the counter in an abandoned broken dome on a barren moon. He had to look. There was something in his way though, blocking his vision, and after a moment he realized he would have to lift his head up from where it was buried in his arms if he was going to see anything.

Gradually he managed to raise one arm high enough to peek out from under it. Not the dome, he observed with relief before dropping his arm back into place. There was something in front of him that he vaguely recognized though, a glowing blue column that rose up from the floor, and the soft humming was coming from it. Of course; it was a TARDIS – that was good, wasn't it? TARDISes were safe. Except they weren't, not really, why would he think they were safe? No, a TARDIS was even worse – if he was in a TARDIS, that meant the moon had been the dream all along. He was still in the War, and they were still there and they were coming for him, all of them, and they'd find him and then… _No, no, no, no! Stop it! They're gone and there's nothing. It's safe here now, remember that it's safe here._

He couldn't remember why it should be safe. There was something in his mind about it, just at his fingertips, but he couldn't catch hold of it as it skittered away from him. _Come over here, thought_, he tried to coax it. _Come here with me where it's safe and dark and we can hide together. _It refused to come to him, instead sheltering in the back of his mind where the shadows couldn't reach it, and he decided to leave it be rather than risk drawing attention to it. There were few enough things that had managed to stay away from the whispering snares that had been laid through his mind.

Something was tapping his shoulder, and he realized it was his own hand, marking out the familiar four-beat rhythm that had once thundered through his head, _one two three four, one two three four_. Maybe if he focused on that enough it would come back and drive away that infernal whispering, and so he closed his eyes and just listened to the sound of his hearts racing in his chest. Slowly they eased and became a steadier soothing pattern, and the whispering faded away as the drumming drowned it out and let his mind come creeping back. _Steady, steady, count the rhythm, keep the pattern, one two three four, one two three four._

Above him there were other sounds now, other voices, but he ignored them – they weren't whispers and they weren't dangerous. They were part of the safety, even if they were coming toward him. The voices swirled around, questioning, but he blocked them out and kept counting evenly in his head. Someone was right next to him now, but he couldn't look at them, couldn't risk breaking the rhythm of the drumming. It was madness, perhaps, but it was _his_ madness, and he had nothing to fear from the drums – they were his to command now, rising at his call and marking the beat as he ordered. The drums were his and so was he, answering to none but himself. His mind responded to the steady marching cadence, the comforting predictability letting it calm and fall back in line as the Master reclaimed control and forced the whispering memories back where they belonged.

And then someone touched him.

* * *

As Rory struggled through the open TARDIS doors lugging Amy's packed suitcases and his own overnight bag, Amy skipped up the stairs to the console platform and dropped down into one of the chairs with a satisfied smile, planning her outfits for the next week. No more of that 'getting stuck dressed for Rio' nonsense – she now had clothing for every possible climate and occasion, and she intended to make the most of it.

Rory set the luggage down on the platform in preparation for hauling it up the rest of the stairs, and he glanced at her with a weary expression. "Amy," he said tiredly, "we went in to get fresh toothpaste."

"Yeah?" she said with a shrug. "I told you I wanted to pick up a few more things while we were home."

"A _few_." At Amy's nod, Rory sighed. "Meaning all the contents of a few closets. Right." He eyed the stairs before him, and then turned his gaze back down to the stuffed suitcases at his feet. "Spartacus never had to deal with this," he muttered as he picked up the luggage. Amy grinned and leaned back, swinging her chair from side to side as he stepped past her and continued up the stairs toward their room, but she paused as something on the chair across from hers caught her attention.

She sat up and leaned ahead, stretching her arm forward to catch the edge of the small television screen with her fingertips and draw it into her hand. Bringing it back to her lap, she looked at the screen curiously. She'd never actually held it before - the Master usually kept a close grip on it when he wasn't deliberately leaving it unguarded to taunt the Doctor, and on those occasions the Doctor had never let her near it. But the Doctor was out, still on the hunt for more fish fingers, and so Amy took advantage of the opportunity to examine the screen.

It didn't look nearly as sinister as the Doctor seemed to think it was, nor even much different from Earth electronics apart from the materials being unfamiliar. Of course, most Earth electronics hadn't been built by hand from scrap wire, nor could they get reception from anywhere and anytime across the galaxy, so she wasn't prepared to discount it based purely on its unremarkable appearance. She'd seen some of the things the Doctor had constructed, which usually seemed to work regardless of how ridiculous they looked, and according to him the Master possessed a shrewder sense for engineering than even he did. And, unlike the Doctor, the Master delighted in using that talent to make life miserable for as many people as he could.

The absence of the fractious Time Lord was starting to worry her now. He was a pest, but the sort who you preferred to have pestering you, because then at least you knew where he was and what he was doing. If he wasn't in the console room, that meant he was somewhere else, and she doubted he would have retreated to his room again without his television. Whenever he did leave it alone it was always in the Doctor's presence, and he rarely went far, usually returning within a few minutes to pounce with glee on the Doctor's hasty attempts to scan the device while he was gone.

Footsteps came down the corridor above as Rory returned, and Amy called up to him, "Did you see the Master anywhere?"

Puzzled, Rory shook his head. "Now you mention it, no. Isn't he in his room?" Amy held up the television screen in one hand, and Rory's brow furrowed. "O…kay, probably not, then. Do you think we should look for him, or should I just call the Doctor?"

"He'll be back right away anyway," Amy said, waving her hand dismissively. "Besides, we can probably find the Master on our own – it's not like the TARDIS lets him wander around much, and we'd have seen him if he went outside. You check downstairs; maybe he went to the swimming pool or something." Rory gave her a skeptical look at the suggestion of the Master doing anything as innocent as swimming, but he started down the stairs, and Amy was just turning away to leave the console platform when a brief movement caught her eye. "Hey, hold up a sec."

Rory paused on the stairs as Amy crouched down to peer through the glass platform floor, and he followed her gaze to under the steps he was standing on. At first he couldn't see anything in the darkness below the stairs, but then he saw something shift in the blackness and caught a glimpse of white-blond hair in the faint blue light from the time rotor column. "What is he…?" Rory and Amy glanced at each other in sudden panic and leapt for the stairs that lead to the console room's lower level.

They reached the bottom of the stairs, Rory stumbling slightly as Amy drew up short in front of him, and eyed the Time Lord, who was sitting hunched and pressed back as far as he could go underneath the side stairway. He didn't look up as they slowly approached, but he also didn't seem to be doing anything nefarious and the engine controls and mechanisms didn't appear to have been tampered with. His arms were wrapped tightly over his head, and he was rocking back and forth slightly in time with the tapping of his hand against his shoulder. "Hey," Amy said to him cautiously. "You all right there?" There was no response, and she reached out toward him but was stopped by Rory's hand on her arm.

"That's probably not a good idea," Rory whispered to her. "I really think you should get the Doctor – I'll stay here with the Master and keep talking to him, but the Doctor knows what's going on with him far more than we do." Amy hesitated, not wanting to leave, but Rory nodded in the direction of the TARDIS doors and said, "One of us has to fetch the Doctor, and I've seen this sort of thing in the hospital before."

Reluctantly Amy headed back up to the main level, watching the two over her shoulder. "Fine, I'll try to find him. Just… don't get yourself eaten or anything while I'm gone, 'kay?"

Rory winced. "I'll try not to be." Amy left and he turned back to the Master, who still was showing no signs that he'd noticed their presence. "Master? Can you hear me?" The Time Lord didn't give any reply, and Rory edged up to him and crouched apprehensively at his side. "Look, Amy's going to get the Doctor, and he'll help you get better. It'll be okay." His words had no detectable effect, but Rory sighed and continued to speak quietly to the alien. The rocking was becoming less noticeable, though whether that was due to Rory's words or just the Master calming down on his own, he didn't know. Still, his talking didn't seem to be making things any worse, so he persevered with it.

After an interminable few minutes Rory heard approaching boots, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Amy and the Doctor ducking under the platform. Glad to have the company of people who weren't likely to kill him, Rory scooted backward and stood next to Amy as the Doctor moved in. "We just found him like this," he explained quickly. "He seems to be coming around, but he's still not responding. What is it; a seizure of some sort?"

"Something like that, yes." The Doctor dipped his head down to try to see the Master's face under his arms, but without success, and then waved one hand in front of the other Time Lord. "He might not actually be awake right now, not all the way, and if he isn't I might be able to -" Before Rory could intervene, the Doctor brought his hand up and lightly touched the back of the Master's head. Whatever he'd intended to do after that he got no further with, as the Master's fist flew out with explosive speed and caught the Doctor directly in the temple, making him collapse backward.

Amy yelped with surprise and jumped forward to catch the limp Doctor while Rory swiftly moved between them and the Master, who remained sitting where he was with his hand still hanging in the air. His eyes were glassy, but the dazed look faded as he took in the sight of the Doctor lying sprawled on the floor before him. Confusion followed by shock flickered across the Time Lord's face, and he slowly lowered his hand as if he'd just realized it was there, staring around Rory at the Doctor's prone form.

A groan from the Doctor made Rory glance back, and Amy helped the alien sit up. The brown-haired Time Lord shook his head dizzily and rubbed the side of it with one hand, propping himself up with the other, and then glowered at the Master. "Well, you certainly still hit as hard as ever," he grumbled. "Was that _really_ necessary?"

The irritation in the Doctor's voice surprised Rory, and at the implied blame he felt an unexpected surge of anger and defensiveness on the Master's part. On most occasions the Master was guilty as sin for whatever charge could be laid against him, but not this time. Of all people the Doctor knew how violent the Master's reactions could be at even the best of times, not to mention the alien's severe aversion to any contact with his head, and to provoke him when he was so obviously not in his right mind seemed verging on idiocy. "Doctor, that was completely your own fault," he said, frowning. "Why did you even do that? You know he wasn't in control."

The Doctor's eyes flicked over to the Master, who met his gaze for a second, and an unreadable flash of something crossed the blond Time Lord's face before vanishing under his more familiar scowl. Pushing himself up lightly with one hand against the floor, he rose with surprising speed only to came face to face with a startled Rory. "Get out of my way," the Master snarled, planting both hands on Rory's chest and shoving him back hard, and Rory stumbled on the Doctor's legs and keeled over, landing awkwardly across Amy's lap. "Stupid stunted little apes; all you ever are is in the way," the Time Lord growled, pacing slowly forward to stand over them with his fists clenched and fixing them with a hard glare.

From his position sprawled on the floor and partially propped up by Amy, Rory held his hands up in appeasement and tried not to make eye contact with him. "Sorry, sorry! I didn't realize you were going to get up just then. If I'd known I would definitely have moved. A lot." He fought the urge to add 'Please don't kill me' to the end of that – not that he wasn't honestly thinking it, but he was terrified that saying so might drive the Master to murder him just to be contrary.

Seconds ticked past with no one moving, nor daring to breathe in Rory's case, but just as Amy was wondering if she should say something to break the tension, the Master gave a disdainful sneer and turned away. He stalked up the stairs, not looking back at any of them, and continued along the upper corridor to his room, and when they heard his door close Amy and Rory both let out surreptitious sighs of relief. The Doctor craned his neck to see the stairs through the glass floor above, but the Master didn't return, and he huffed. "Right, that's done it, then. Just brilliant. And he says _I'm_ the avoidant one. What'd you have to go and do that for?"

"What, me?" Rory said in bewilderment, and the Doctor raised his eyebrows in confirmation. "Because… you really shouldn't have been blaming him – he was completely out of it when he hit you."

The Doctor rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. "Yes, _thank_ you, Rory; I am quite aware of that, and so was he, and we were both hoping no one would mention it. But you had to go and point it out anyway, and now he's embarrassed and will doubtless be absolutely horrid to everyone for the next week to make up for it. Well, more than usual." He slapped the top of his thighs and stood, brushing the creases out of his trouser legs a little unsteadily. "I suppose I'd better go do some damage control."

He tottered up the stairs to the console platform, with the Ponds trailing behind him, and once he reached the top he stopped to hold on to the rail for a moment. "Are you all right?" Amy asked him worriedly. "You really look woozy."

"Perhaps a bit," the Doctor said, leaning back against the railing, and he shook his head again, trying to clear it. "Blimey, he can throw a punch when he wants to." He paused and opened his mouth as if to add on to that, but he closed it again without saying anything and just stood gazing up the stairs.

After a moment without any further movement from him, Amy poked his shoulder. "Hey. Are you _sure_ you're okay?"

The Doctor gave her a brief sidelong glance. "Yes. Yes, of course," he said distractedly. He stood for a few seconds more before finally heading for the stairs, but he paused with his foot on the first step to look back at the Ponds. "You know, it's a wonderful day out there," he said, gesturing at the TARDIS doors with a smile that didn't quite touch the sudden sadness in his eyes. "You two should go enjoy it while we're here." He gave them a significant look and then turned and continued slowly up the stairs, and they watched the Doctor until he disappeared around the corner at the top.

"Do you think we should hang around, just in case?" Rory asked Amy quietly. Amy bit her lip and gazed down at the glass panels of the console platform, rubbing the toe of her boot over a scuff mark on one, and finally she shook her head and took Rory's arm. While she wasn't usually one for listening to the Doctor when he told her to stay behind or not follow him, on this occasion she had the feeling that he genuinely needed some space, and so the two humans went reluctantly to the doors and quietly slipped out of the silent TARDIS.

* * *

**A/N: Poor Rory; he just can't catch a break anywhere.**


	12. Communication Breakdown Part 3

**A/N: Yikes. Nothing can even be said about how late this one is. Er… at least it didn't take twelve years? ^^'**

**Thank you so much to everyone who commented in the interim – you guys are all wonderful! In specific, thank you to: GuesssWho, friendlyquark **(No! No, not the kittens!)**, Person-without-a-FF.N-account** (Thank you so much!)**, Linorea** (I just hope I can get those updates posted a little faster in the future!)**, RiddleMeThis17** (Eee, thanks! ^^ It diverges from canon a few days after A Christmas Carol, though I actually started writing it before that. I am so slow.)**, versenaberrie** (I think they've all noticed by now x3)**, saffarinda, somebodykillme, Solmea** (Thanks for the PM as well!)**, GoodApollo, IsaGirl10, Guest** (Thanks for both reviews! Alas, the Master's not feeling very huggy)**, Ithyl** (Still planning to finish it eventually ^^)**, Beautifulspace, Dark Knight Warrior** (I'm wondering how they'll manage that in the 50th, but he does always come back)**, guest, PlushChrome** (Thanks for both reviews; I'm glad you came back to it! :3)**, MAH-BLACKBERREH** (Thanks! ^^)**, Valiant rose** (I'm not sure Rory would enjoy that much… o.o)**, kuhekabir, Lovely Rain Dancer** (It certainly seems that way, doesn't it?)**, Dragoneisha** (Poor Rory – he's so fun to torment though)**, Ginko-333, Lucillia, kyu000** (Thank you!) and **Mango Supreme** (Sorry for leaving it so long on a cliffhanger!).

* * *

Concealed in the hallway's shadows, the Doctor listened until he heard the soft creak of the TARDIS doors and the click of the latch. He poked his head around the corner, half-expecting to see Amy standing there with crossed arms and an obstinate air, but the console room stood empty no matter how far he craned his neck to look.

He turned back to the hall and sighed, rubbing his hand over his jaw with a wince. The usually bright roundels in the corridor cast only a filtered orange glow, muted with blue at the edges, and the platform glowed like a beacon in contrast, promising hours of repairs, innovations and everything else that wasn't dealing with the Master. His eyes lingered on it over his shoulder, but he drew in a deep breath and continued down the hexagonal corridor to the Master's room.

Without surprise he found the Master's door sealed shut. Though no sound came from within the room, the faint psychic rustlings at the edge of his mind revealed the Master's presence, and he leaned in close to the door. "What happened?" the Doctor asked, keeping his voice low, but there was no response other than the psychic sense retreating. He folded his arms and swayed side to side. "Something must have. Or at least I hope so, because otherwise we may have a very big problem."

"Another one? How many do you want?" came the retort, distorted through the metal door. "It's no matter of yours. Now run along and play with your pets – I'm sure there's some foodstuff you haven't desecrated yet."

"Listen to me; just for once, listen. Those memories, those shadows in your head, they're growing stronger, aren't they? And they're going to keep getting stronger, every day a little more, wearing you down until you've nothing left to fight them. But give me a few minutes to put some structure back and –"

"Right, I'll just open the doors and let you come waltzing on in; I _don't_ think," the Master interrupted.

"You never do think. And in case it's escaped your notice, you only _have_ one door now and it's this one right here," the Doctor said, rapping his knuckles against the bulkhead. "Which I certainly could open if I so chose. Ignore it all you want, but the longer we do nothing, the more likely that damage will become irreversible."

That was met with a snort, followed by the receding scuff of boots. "'We'?" the Master said, his voice briefly muffled. "It's nothing involving you, and I don't need your heroics. Much though I know you'd just _love_ to charge in and save the day, I'm afraid your princess is in another castle."

"Could you at least attempt to not be -" the Doctor flailed his hand briefly "- to not be you for a moment and take this seriously?"

Inside the room, clothing dropped with a soft thud to the floor, shortly followed by a drawer being yanked open and its contents rummaged through. "Serious is boring, especially when you're involved. You get all doe-eyed and earnest and dribble sincerity on everything, and it's pathetic and embarrassing for all concerned. Now where the hell is that shirt…."

Ignoring the stream of muttered curses at the uncooperative chest of drawers, the Doctor scoffed and tucked his hands under his elbows again. "And what's hiding in a corner if not pathetic?" he mocked, but to no effect. He rocked back on his heels and continued with only partially feigned derision seeping into his voice. "Still, typical of you, keeping everyone at arm's length and attacking friend and foe alike. And why would you want my aid anyway? Much better to let yourself wither away - you wouldn't want to take the risk of someone actually getting close to you, now, would you? I suppose some people might call that cowardice, but me, I call it… no, never mind; I call it cowardice, too."

"Ouch! The sting! How ever will I bear the pain your words have wrought in my soul?" Another drawer was hauled out, banging against the limits of its tracks. "If you think _that's_ going to affect me, you're worse at this game than I thought. What you call a coward, I call a man showing damn good sense, which certainly applies to keeping your sticky fingers out of my head. You'd leave nasty little do-goody fingerprints all over - it would take forever to clean. No maid service for minds, either. Maybe I should start one. Don't bother applying; you'd be terrible, and your legs would look ghastly in the uniform."

The Doctor pursed his lips and bumped the toe of his boot against the base of the door. He recognized that manic tone, swerving from one distracted thought to another in almost breathless fashion, and it never heralded anything good. The engine room grew more tempting by the minute. On the other hand, if the Master played himself out and became too exhausted to argue…

Settling back against the door frame, the Doctor straightened his bow tie and sniffed. "Curious how you're so worried about my intrusions but don't give a thought to everyone else's," he said. "You're an open book any passing stranger could leaf through at will or rewrite as he saw fit without you ever noticing the difference, but, oh, heaven forbid you allow me in, because I might _meddle_ with something!"

The Master sniggered. "'Might'? Surely you mean 'would'. I've never known you once to pass up the opportunity of – hah!" His voice pitched up in triumph and he hauled something fabric out of the drawer, but the minor victory cut short as what sounded like half a hardware store cascaded to the floor of his room. Jangling and reverberating clangs mixed in a cacophony that gradually trailed off into tinkling pings, fading to the faint metallic rattle of small things rolling away for the corners, until at last silence fell. "...ah. You were saying?"

"What in the world have you got in there?"

"That's not what you were saying, Doctor; pay attention."

The Doctor's eyes narrowed and he tilted his head, easing over until his ear hovered next to the door. Hasty rattling and scrapings could be heard within, stray objects being rounded up and stashed away, but nothing to help him identify the exact nature of what had been dropped. "Yes, right," he said, straining his ears. "Well, as I was saying, then, it's not like you could keep anyone out, myself included."

"Don't forget with whom you're dealing, Doctor," the Master said with a sudden growl in his voice. "I don't need walls to launch an attack. If you push too far, someone will end up broken and it won't be me."

"Oh, talk, talk, snarl, snarl," the Doctor replied, flapping his hand in the air. "Heard it all before; let's have something new for a change. Even on a good day you're nowhere near strong enough to affect me psychically."

The Master chuckled slowly, the low deliberate laugh that never failed to send creeping shivers up the Doctor's spine. "Sorry, did I say you?"

A stab of fear pierced the Doctor's chest, and he snapped forward, coming to a quivering halt with the tip of his nose almost grazing the door. "You meant me," he said, his words echoing back at him as his breath condensed on the metal surface. "If you're wise, if you have a single molecule of sense left in that slurry you call a brain, you know that you meant me and no one else."

"Hah! Touched a nerve there, did I?" Steps crossed the room, coming to a halt just on the other side of the door. "You're so very predictable. Always the hero, self-sacrificing to a fault because you can't bear to see your little friends hurt. But they are anyway. And they forgive you and forgive you and say it's not your fault, and you let yourself believe it as they're destroyed in your name." He paused, blowing a whistling breath through his teeth. "How does it feel when you see the look in their eyes, that final second when they realise you're not going to save them? When you see the last shred of their soul evaporate into nothingness?"

"Stop it!"

"Would you like to see that in your precious Amy Pond's eyes? Her mind shattering, neuron by neuron, until she's nothing but an empty husk? A pretty one though, I grant you – I could have some fun with that before the end."

The Doctor heard another ping and distantly wondered if it was his own brain snapping. Engine room. Should have gone with the engine room. But enough was definitely enough. He drew in a long breath, waiting for his jaw to unclench enough to speak. "While we're on the subject," he finally said, very soft and cold, "at an estimate, how long do you think it would take someone with basic psychic abilities to turn you into their own personal sock puppet? Twenty seconds? Maybe less? There's nothing you could do to stop them and you know it; any cheap hypnotist could wave his hand and you'd do whatever he said, become his own trained monkey performing tricks for his amusement."

A surge of roiling anger rose from the Master, but the Doctor continued relentlessly, not caring that his voice was rising. "And this is just the beginning. It's going to get worse, much worse, until there's nothing left of you in your head. But when the memories take over you, when you can't even see or think or move because they'll be crushing your mind in a living hell every minute of your existence, at least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you're in that state through your own stubbornness. It's already starting, isn't it? Even the Ponds have noticed it now. Not to worry; I'm sure they'll be very understanding and spare some pity for the pathetic wreck you'll become as your last vestiges of control slip away. You won't care though. You'll be a vegetable, a blank-eyed madman stuck in hell, alone, forever, and the best part, oh, the biggest joke of all, is that you just let it happen without doing a thing to stop it. Oh, how Rassilon would laugh."

Something crashed against the other side of the door with a shattering of glass, and the Doctor leapt aside and plastered himself against the wall, his hearts thundering. The pitiful clinks of brutalized glassware faded away, and he held his breath, waiting for the inevitable retaliation. The Master never had much of a span between 'deceptive calm' and 'murderous rage', and through the wall he could feel the other renegade's fury sizzling over the edge of his consciousness. Any second now…

The silence stretched on. After a moment, the Doctor frowned and slid cautiously around to the door again. Of all the things he might have expected, this was not among them. No rampage, no torrents of profanity, no threats of eternal suffering – it disturbed him, how still everything had gone. Even the faint background hum of the TARDIS seemed hushed. Finally the Master spoke, a vicious snarl that made the hairs prickle at the back of the Doctor's neck. "Burn in hell."

The grim finality to his voice brooked no further discussion. The Doctor banged the heel of his hand hard against the door, but he bit his tongue and forced himself to step away, coming to rest against a support on the far wall. He stretched his neck, gazing blankly into a yellow light overhead, and then shook his head, tight-lipped. "Right. Well, that's that," he said, his words clipped and sharp. "If you're so determined to refuse my aid, I'll wash my hands of the whole thing and you can find your own way out of this mess. But if it doesn't work, if you run out of time, don't expect to come crawling back to me. I _want_ to help, I truly do, but I refuse to watch you destroy yourself again. Decide your course, and once your temper has settled enough to hold a civilized conversation you can tell me where to leave you."

He pushed away from the wall and stalked down the corridor. So much for that plan. He should have known talking to the Master would be as fruitless as ever. Cursed, stubborn, ill-tempered, idiotic -

"…Doctor?"

His steps faltered. It had been said softly, so low he had barely heard the word. Still, the suddenness of it with the hesitant rise at the end spoke volumes, and he was certain the Master hadn't meant to speak aloud. The Doctor paused and bowed his head, trying to will away the constriction in his chest. He should keep going – he knew that. The ultimatum had been cast and backing down now would only weaken his position. He had to stand firm, for both their sakes. And yet, for all the centuries that had passed, in that one word he could hear the child he had known, the little boy who'd once clung to him, terrified of being abandoned. Different name, different voice, but the fear behind it was the same as ever, both childish and ancient, painfully familiar.

Slowly he walked back to rest his hands against either side of the doorframe and sighed. "I'm here." The Master didn't reply, but the Doctor thought he heard the faintest of indrawn breaths break the fraught atmosphere. He bumped his forehead lightly against the coolness of the door, allowing his frustration to seep away until calmness settled around him. "I'll always be here. But you need to let me in. Being pigheaded does no good for anyone, least of all you."

"Who's pigheaded?" the Master grumbled. "You're the one who never lets it drop."

The tension in the Doctor's shoulders eased and he gave his bowtie another tug. The Master's voice was calmer now, despite the petulance, and the griping held more resignation than malice. It was probably too much to hope that he'd been swayed at all, but he did sound at least a little conciliatory. Not in words, perhaps, nor in tone, nor really in anything clearly perceptible, but there was definitely a faint sense of penitence.

"What if we made a deal?" the Doctor said, resting his shoulder in the doorframe and crossing his ankles. "You let me in long enough to get the basics done, and in return I give you what you want."

There was a pause, and the Doctor raised his eyebrows when he heard cautious steps near the door. "And what, pray tell, do I want?" the Master asked with an equal mix of suspicion and curiosity.

"More freedom to go where you please. If your mind is repaired, I needn't be so concerned about, oh, say you leaving the TARDIS on your own, or going to busier places you would enjoy. We can't do that now, not when you might come home with _anyone_ in your head, but if you let me help you…" He left the sentence hanging and listened closely, stretching his psychic senses forward, and he could hear a faint rhythmic tapping against the wall as the other thought it over.

Finally he heard the Master shift next to the door, and he couldn't help but smile when he realized that the other Time Lord was unwittingly mirroring his own position against the frame. "I've got a better idea," the Master said, at which the Doctor gave an unsurprised shake of his head and muttered 'Oh, of course you do'. "All that would be is you letting me run the leash out a bit further. Not much interested in that, thanks. If you're going to have the audacity to offer me freedom, you'd better be willing to make good on that, and not with some trifle like unsupervised walkies. No, if you want me to cooperate with you, you're going to have to give me something of actual value. Take the isomorphic lock off the TARDIS controls; then we'll talk."

"And leave you with full access to the ship?" the Doctor said with indignation, straightening up. "I'm hardly going to give you complete free rein. I know you - give you an inch and you take a whole galaxy."

The Master shrugged, the fabric of his hoodie brushing against the wall, and strolled away from the door. "Then I guess that's it for the deal. Nice chatting with you; now go away so I can get some sleep."

A pronounced squeak of bedsprings followed, and the Doctor huffed. For a moment he'd thought he was on to something, but of course the peevish Time Lord would drive a hard bargain, even now. _Contrary old idiot_, he thought with a pout, crossing his arms again. _If he was hanging from a cliff and I tried to pull him up, he'd demand payment for the privilege._

Still, no need to dismiss the idea out of hand, regardless of how unreasonable the Master might be. For a moment, the Doctor allowed himself to wonder what might result from giving the other man this victory. Utter chaos and devastation seemed a strong possibility. On the other hand… The Doctor tapped his chin lightly with his fingers. On the other hand, just how much use would unlocking the controls be to the Master?

The locks might have been necessary in the beginning, but lately the TARDIS herself had become a far greater theft deterrent than any lock. After all, it wasn't the isomorphic locks that sent lashes of electricity at the Master any time he wandered too close to the console, or that sealed the hallways when he tried to sneak into places he shouldn't. Without the locks… _Nothing would actually change_, the Doctor thought with a sly grin. Perhaps this was one carrot he could afford to sacrifice.

He cleared his throat and leant against the wall with his arms folded and one foot up, radiating casual coolness until he remembered the Master couldn't see him anyway. "What if I said yes?" he asked. "If I did promise to remove the isomorphic locks, what then?"

The room remained silent, and the Doctor started to worry that perhaps the Master had fallen asleep. However, after a long pause, the bed squeaked again as its occupant sat up. "What?" the Master said, and from his unguarded tone it seemed that this time he'd truly surprised the man.

"If you let me into your mind, exclusively for the purpose of setting up your mental defences, I give you my word I will remove the isomorphic lock," the Doctor said. "And after that, I won't push any more help on you unless you ask; you can do all the rest on your own - rebuilding your mental shields, blocking off the implanted memories, stopping the voices. Once you have a solid foundation to work from, it'll all be possible, and that's all I'm trying to give you, nothing more. Permit me that, and the locks will be gone."

"Go pull the other," the Master said. "You wouldn't let me touch those controls if the ship was on _fire_. Not that I haven't considered testing the theory." Despite the dismissive words, the Doctor heard the soft thud of boots crossing the floor, followed by a crunching of broken glass.

Once again the Doctor's hearts beat a wild samba against his ribs, but this time with eager excitement rather than fear. "I assure you, I am completely in earnest," he said. "So, deal?"

A few more seconds ticked past until the Master said, "All right, then. But you take the lock off first. To prove your intent."

"You already know my answer to _that_ suggestion. I'm not trying to cheat you; I have every intention of keeping my word and you certainly won't get any better offer than this, but the locks stay on until you've filled your side of the bargain. If nothing else, it would be a fine mess if I removed them first and then someone used you to make off with the TARDIS. No, it's my way or nothing. What do you say?"

Moments dragged out as he waited for the answer. The Master was certainly taking his time, but the Doctor felt confident that even he couldn't refuse this particular bait. The offer might not have been entirely wise, but for now he pushed the doubts away and focused on the triumph of getting through to him at last.

In his distraction, it took a second to register in the Doctor's brain when the Master said, "No."

"_What?_ But why not? You said yourself that -"

"I didn't expect you to actually go for it, idiot," the Master sighed. "I just thought it might shut you up for a bit."

"Right, fair enough," the Doctor said quickly, "but now that I have gone for it, why not accept? Really, you're the one who gets all the benefit here, so why keep resisting when it's so obviously in your favour?"

The Master settled heavily against the wall without responding. Judging by the faint tinkling sounds, he was poking around the shards of whichever mistreated object he'd smashed earlier. Probably a lamp. His room used to have a lamp.

The lack of any excuse in itself answered his question, and the Doctor's hearts sank as the brief hope flickered out again. "I can't do anything if you refuse to trust me," he said, closing his eyes with frustration and thumping his head against the door. "A few minutes of trust; that's all I need. You know that I would never hurt you."

The silence dragged out, and finally he heard the Master say quietly, "Yeah, I know that." Another pause, shorter this time, followed by a slight sigh. "And it doesn't make any difference. I _can't_; d'you understand that? I just can't."

The Doctor's shoulders sagged and he leaned against the door, sliding down to the floor and draping his arms across his knees. Well, there it was. If he'd accomplished nothing else for all his efforts, at least he'd gotten an honest answer out of the Master, though not one he'd hoped for. No matter how much time they had, he doubted it would be enough to erase a lifetime of mistrust, nor to mend the damage done by Rassilon. The ache in the Doctor's jaw gave testament to how strongly that particular trauma still affected the Master.

Still, there had been something there, if just for a moment, a tentative consideration rather than immediate flat denial, and a miniscule amount of progress was better than none. There would be better times to bring the issue up again, and the least he could do to reward that rare glimmer of candour was grant the man's wish to be left in peace.

"Okay," he said with a shallow nod. "Okay. We can find something else then, some other way. No matter what, I promise, I will not lose you to this."

The Master breathed a faint laugh and clicked his tongue. "I'm already lost," he said. "I was from the moment you fired that pistol and severed the Gate. The only question is which will go first: mind or body. And I'm afraid there isn't much time left for either."

* * *

**A/N: And that's the end of this section, finally. I promise I'll try to do better with future updates. ^^'**


	13. Communication Breakdown Part 4

**A/N: Thank you so much to all who've commented and followed this story over its hiatus, and sorry once again for leaving it hanging so long. ^^'**

**Edit: Fixed a line in the 18th paragraph - somehow a couple of words were deleted in the original posting.**

* * *

Alone in the console room, the Doctor tinkered with the TARDIS accelerator. The Ponds had retired to bed some hours earlier and the Master had yet to emerge from his room, allowing the Doctor a few blissful hours of peace of which he was taking full advantage. He was thoroughly absorbed in replacing a wave transformer when he heard soft footfalls on the platform next to him, and a glance over his shoulder showed the Master sprawling back into one of the yellow chairs, arms crossed.

When the other didn't speak, the Doctor gave a slight prompting wave of his grease-stained hand. "…hello?"

The Master didn't reply, instead bracing his foot against the railing and pushing the chair slowly from side to side. Despite the casual posture, the Doctor could see the stiffness in his shoulders and tension in his fingers where they gripped his arms, his knuckles standing out white against the black fabric. The Doctor pursed his lips and returned quietly to his work. No point in pressuring him to be sociable if he didn't want to be, not when the man was already on edge.

The replacement transformer squeaked against the metal socket but refused to go in, and the Doctor gestured with his free hand at the collection of tools scattered around the floor. "Pass that spanner there." The Master huffed but dropped his foot from the railing to flick the spanner up with the toe of his boot, and the Doctor caught it midair without looking. After checking that it was the requested implement, he flipped the heavy metal wrench over in his hand and started hammering the transformer into place with the blunt end. "So," he said between clangs, "any plans?"

The Master only gave a noncommittal grunt, and when the Doctor ducked his head around the console to look at him, he saw the other Time Lord gazing pensively at the black television screen sitting on the opposite chair. The Master's brow furrowed, and the Doctor could almost see the gears whirring behind the narrowed hazel eyes – the thought hit him like a rock in the stomach that it wasn't something he'd seen often of late. Confusion, yes, anger, certainly, but the brilliant mind that the Doctor had always admired, even envied, had slipped away over the last few weeks so subtly he hadn't even noticed.

Rubbing his temple, the Master finally spoke. "Would a naked Dalek in chains mean anything to you?"

"Blimey. What _have_ you been watching?"

The Master tapped his lip lightly with one finger and pointed at the television screen. "I saw one on there. The device was off, I'm certain of it, and yet the image appeared of its own volition. A Dalek in a broken casing, held with manacles."

The Doctor paused. "Ah. Yes. I may be able to help you with that one. There aren't many Daleks who fit that description, but one is Dalek Caan – given his interest in you, it seems logical this would be him again, although I've no idea how he could have sent the image to you."

"Not to mention how he knew where to send it. The TARDIS isn't exactly a stable address." The Master tilted his head with a toothy smile. "Perhaps he's been watching you."

"Caan is dead," the Doctor said firmly, rising from under the console and stretching his back. "He died on the Crucible."

"So? I've died in lots of places, yet here I am. Dead or not, he still ended up on my telly." The Master leaned forward and pressed his palms together, shaking them toward the Doctor. "And that interests me. I _know_ that message wasn't in the memory bank, so it must have been sent from an outside source, which means there was a signal received. Trace that back and we might start getting some answers."

The Doctor rocked back on his heels, balancing with his hip against the console, and wiped the grime off his hands with a checkered handkerchief. "To anything in particular?"

"Why would a Dalek pluck me out of the Time Lock? Hmm?" The Master spread his arms out wide. "Anything? I doubt it was to die on a rock or stay trapped in a decaying body until I fade away. No, he wants me to do something for him, just like everyone else who's ever brought me back, which means he needs me alive and functioning. This message of his confirms that."

The Doctor stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket and picked up the television, turning it over in his hands as he examined it. "Message? What did he say to you, exactly?" he asked, but the Master shook his head sharply before he'd finished the words.

"I can't remember."

"Even a single word? Think carefully," the Doctor said, dropping into the seat across from the Master and holding the television out to him. "He often spoke in riddles – was there anything that stood out as odd or significant? You must remember _something_."

The Master twitched sharply and drove his fingers into his blond hair. "Stop it. I _can't _remember; it's too tangled with the rest. It's all buried; too much dust, it's buried in the dust. It all fell in together and I can't separate it. If I remember it'll pull me in, too." His voice was short and clipped, and his left hand had started tapping, beating out a faint metallic rhythm of four against the railing. The television dropped ignored into the Doctor's lap as he reached instinctively for the Master's hand to catch it, to still that hated noise, but he stopped his fingers just a hair's breadth short of the Master's, instead wrapping them around the cold metal railing and gripping it tightly.

The platform fell silent but for the tapping as the Doctor watched him guardedly, noticing his eyes had glazed over in fixed concentration. To his relief though, the intense focus in the Master's face slowly eased, and the other Time Lord blinked and flexed his jaw before rolling his head back and drawing in a steady breath. "I have no need of remembering," the Master said as calmly as if nothing had happened. "The very existence of it is sufficient proof. If Caan meant only for me to die, why contact me? The only reason for him to take action at this point is if he intends to prevent that death, or at the very least delay it long enough for me to fulfill his purpose."

The Doctor relaxed into his chair, drawing his hand back and lacing his fingers together. "You do recall what I said about Caan? I'd be wary of getting involved in anything to do with him. His powers were formidable but he was never a Dalek to be trusted, and if he does have a plan for you, it's in his own service, not yours."

"Do let me know when you meet a trustworthy Dalek." The Master shifted his shoulders and rested his head against the railing. "I'm not going to actually _do_ what he wants, idiot. No, no, no. I'm going to find the means by which he intended to keep me alive, use it for all it's worth and go on my merry way. Caan can go to hell, if he isn't already there."

"You may not have a choice. Caan manipulated time to position the players exactly as his plans dictated – if he wanted something to happen, it happened, and he's already been altering your timeline for who knows how long. Events that seemed coincidence or accident may well have been deliberate. You being brought to the Gate, your resurrection going wrong, even my finding you at the end of the universe could have been guided by him."

"I think you give him too much credit," the Master said. "Time is too fluid to be easily directed, especially by any creature so linear in thought as a Dalek. Perhaps he prodded it in a general direction, but he didn't strike me as any great chess master."

"Yet you're still betting everything on his having a cure for your condition that even you haven't been able to find."

The Master shrugged one shoulder and twisted around to face the Doctor. "A cure, a palliative, a way to regenerate or get a new body, anything that keeps me alive even one hour longer. One doesn't need to be a genius to have the occasional clever idea - look at you – and anything Caan's come up with, I'm sure I can improve upon. Besides, I'm not putting all my eggs in his basket; I've been doing my own investigations. Finding Caan would merely be a shortcut. With a bit of luck I won't need him at all."

"Aren't you curious why he saved you?"

"I never ask why I've been spared. All that matters is that I'm still alive, and whatever else there may be, I can always work from there." He grinned and added, "There's never yet been someone who brought me back and got what they bargained for."

The Doctor pattered his hands over his knees. "True enough." He hopped to his feet and brushed off his trousers, leaving the screen lying on the seat behind him, and then reached up for the bar on the TARDIS monitor and swung it down to eye level. "Well, if that's the line you want to follow, then we'd best get to it, chop-chop, time's a-wasting. Get that screen over here and we'll see if the TARDIS can track down where that signal originated."

"Is your accelerator sufficiently bludgeoned?" the Master said wryly as he slid out of his chair and picked up the television. "There may still be a spark or two of life in it."

"Shut up." The Doctor held his hand out and waggled his fingers. "Gimmie, now."

"So demanding," the Master snipped, handing over the television. "You get ruder with every regeneration."

"And you get shorter." The Doctor stretched across the console to grab a cord near the central column, hauling it to himself and jamming the plug into a jack on the side of the screen. The plug stuck at first, but a few forceful smacks pushed it in, and the Doctor set the screen carefully on the edge of the console and drew out his sonic screwdriver. "Now, let's see who you've been talking with," he mumbled.

The screwdriver buzzed, the green light of its tip reflecting against the screen, and the whir increased in pitch as the Doctor modulated the frequency but the screen stayed obstinately dark. Another adjustment drew a high mechanical shriek from the device, and the Master flinched and grabbed the screwdriver. "Give that here! I'll do it."

The Doctor seized the screwdriver with his other hand, curling around it protectively as the Master tried to pry it loose, and after a brief struggle he succeeded in wrenching away and shot his arm up into the air, holding the tool well out of the Master's reach. "No! Bad! _My_ screwdriver. Besides, you wouldn't know how to use it properly."

"I'm not the one who can't work a metal spanner!"

"You're still not getting my screwdriver. Or going near that screen while it's plugged into my TARDIS, so –" the Doctor flapped his hands at him "- over there with you."

Glaring at him, the Master raised his hands exaggeratedly and stepped slowly back to the railing. "Have it your way, o captain." He slouched against the top bar of the rail, resting his elbows over it without taking his eyes from the Doctor.

The Doctor returned to his task, trying a lower frequency, and after a few more fine-tunings he was rewarded with a stream of data scrolling across the television screen. "Got it," he said with satisfaction. "Just give her a minute and the TARDIS will have the location coordinates."

The Master pushed away from the rail and peered over the Doctor's shoulder at the screen with a frown. "That can't be right," he said, reaching around to tap the screen with one finger. "These are all current signals, not historical ones."

"It's getting to the older ones," the Doctor insisted, but the Master shook his head.

"Look at the sequences. They're progressing forward, not back."

The Doctor squinted at the data, his lips moving silently as he read the blur of information, and he flipped the screen over and pried off its back panel to reveal the circuitry within. "Well, here's a fine mess of things," he said. "You've put it together wrong."

"I did not," the Master said with affront.

"Did, too. Look at this." The Doctor tugged a tiny chip out of its moorings, causing the screen to flash blue and go dark again, and presented it to the other Time Lord. "Your archive circuit was in backwards. That and it's scored so badly I'm surprised if it could function at all."

The Master gingerly took the chip from his fingers, looking from it to the television circuitry and back again. He cleared his throat and handed it back before shoving his hands into his pockets. "That's just some surface scratches. And it's supposed to go in that way."

"Not if you want it to work, it isn't," the Doctor said with a scoff, reinserting the chip the right way around. "So, we now have exactly nothing to go on in tracking down Caan. There's no record of this thing receiving the signal, let alone where that signal came from. If we're to get those coordinates, we'll have to catch it while a message is actually coming in, if another ever does."

The Master sighed and rubbed the back of his neck wearily. "No matter. If there are no more, I'll simply have to find him or his death remedy some other way."

"_We_ will," the Doctor corrected. "I'm helping whether you like it or not." The Master buried his face in his palm with a groan. "I told you, I have no intention of losing you. Now, where should we begin?"

"Dunno yet," the Master said with a shrug. "I'll sleep on it and decide in the morning." He waved toward the television screen. "Unplug that and give it here." The Doctor did as ordered, and the Master analyzed the port on the device's side, rubbing at a scratch in the black finish with one finger. "And you wonder why I never let you play with my toys," he grumbled, tucking the screen under his arm and climbing the stairs.

"See you tomorrow," the Doctor called after him, bending down to pick up the spanner again. The Master flipped a rude gesture over his shoulder without turning, but the Doctor was already clambering back under the console with the spanner in hand.

* * *

Back in his room, the Master tossed the television on to his bed and flopped down next to it, draping his arms over his eyes. That had been rather close for comfort. Losing the signal archives had seemed of such minor concern when he'd built the device – certainly he never thought he might eventually have a use for so insignificant a feature, let alone have his life possibly depending on it, and the absence of it had fully slipped his mind. He dragged the television on to his chest with one hand, not bothering to sit up, and popped open the back again to pull out the chip.

The Master swore under his breath as he examined the small circuit. Much though it aggravated him to admit it even to himself, he could see the Doctor was right for a change. The grooves carved into the chip rendered it useless for its original purpose, even if he did put it back in its proper configuration, and nothing short of replacing it entirely would restore the recording function.

He thumped the back of his head against the red blankets as he thought. Finding a replacement would be easy enough, but he didn't care for dismantling the device, not while it still had a chance of catching a much greater prize. A new chip would write over the memory banks and destroy all his progress, and for what? Finding a Dalek who may or may not know something useful? It hardly seemed a fair trade.

Finally he shook his head and slotted the chip back into place, reversed. He sat up slowly, swinging his legs on to the bed, and pressed his hand to his chest, feeling his hearts fluttering almost painfully under his shirt. The burning hunger at his core had been growing more insistent, nibbling at his organs as it spread inexorably outward, and it was starting to have an impact. He grimaced and let his hand fall away. Whether through Caan or his own inventions, he needed to find a solution to this soon.

Still, it wouldn't be found tonight, and after the day he'd had his overtaxed body desperately needed rest. He switched on the television and poked at its buttons until he found an old Clangers episode. The familiar whistles of the little pink creatures made him smile fondly, and he propped the screen against his pillow and lay down, listening to the calm voice of the narrator and mouthing the words along with the story as the characters went about their search for string soup.

Gradually his eyes drifted closed and the sounds faded into the background as sleep overtook him. Until out of the darkness, the dust came. The narrator's voice rose up again, but now it was changing, warping into many as figures flew around the Master and took form out of the dust, Time Lords and Daleks locked in fierce but futile battle, rifts opening around and under and through them. Explosions of corpses and screams of the dying mingled with the voices, and one stood out among them, a nasal trill that was growing ever more mechanical. "Do you remember?" it asked. "Is it still in your head, the blood and the fire? He put it there for you – I saw."

Time was twisting now as the bodies caught within it deformed into grotesque caricatures, Dalek mixing with Time Lord, skin and metal stretching until it tore, inverting just to reform and begin the process anew. The tortured remnants swirled around him, and still the voice kept on. "Do you see? See how the brave all dance and die, forever and ever as the monsters spawn. They march in such numbers, the unending Degradations; they turn the skies all silver and gold, and all will lie dead in their passing."

Flailing off the bed, the Master grabbed the sides of his head and threw himself into the corner with the lamp shards, pressed as far into it as he could go. "Stop it, stop it, _stop it_!" he yelled, clenching his eyes shut and beating his temples with his fists. "I'm not seeing this; I _refuse_ to see this!" His hearts thrashed against his ribs, the rushing of his own blood drowning out all else with its four-beat rhythm, and he clung to the sound desperately, urging it to fill his mind.

Slowly the maelstrom of blood and metal and dust slowed, responding to the imposing order of the drums. The figures faded into the blackness once again, drifting away like sand until all that was left was the voice, giggling in the dark. "Oh, you will see, and all soon enough," it said. "_They are coming_."

The Master jolted upright and tried to scramble to his feet, only to realise he was lying on his bed again, entangled in the covers. Beside him the television still played softly, on a new episode now, and he grabbed it and stared hard at the screen. No Dalek appeared on it, and after a moment he sighed and set the device down again. As he did so, his face reflected on the screen and his breath caught with fear – just for a second, he could have sworn it looked as distorted as those victims of the Time War. His hand flew to his face, frantically running over every line, but all was as it should have been, nothing missing or out of place.

Willing himself to relax, he lay back down and scrubbed his face with his hands. "Just a dream," he mumbled. "Another bloody dream. And now it's had its fun and it'll go away and let me sleep. Just go to sleep; that's all I have to do. Don't let it win." Reaching down, he shook out the blankets that had wrapped around his legs and tugged them over himself. The television had slipped down the pillow to rest against the wall, and he drew it to his chest, turning the volume up until he could feel the vibrations of every sound. He closed his eyes and drummed his fingers gently across the back of the television, letting it lull his frayed nerves. Nonetheless, it was a long while before he slipped into a thankfully dreamless sleep.

He left the lights on.


End file.
